Charter lobby opposes law it first requested

The California Charter Schools Association asked a Southern California assemblywoman to sponsor a bill "that would address concerns about conflicts of interest on charter school boards, but still let those with a financial stake in a school serve on its board." But now the CCSA thinks the bill carried by Bonnie Garcia, R-Cathedral City, is too tough, so they're fighting it, according to the Riverside Press-Enterprise.

Riverside Press-Enterprise May 6, 2008
Charter school bill now opposed by sponsoring group
By SHIRIN PARSAVAND
The Press-Enterprise

A group representing the state's charter schools was thrown for a loop when the bill it asked a legislator to carry ended up being much more restrictive than expected.

The California Charter Schools Association asked Assemblywoman Bonnie Garcia, R-Cathedral City, to carry a bill that would address concerns about conflicts of interest on charter school boards, but still let those with a financial stake in a school serve on its board.

Garcia heavily amended the bill last month to reflect the concerns of the Assembly Education Committee.

Now, the association is opposing the bill it had sponsored, and charter schools are writing letters to Garcia and other legislators against the bill.

The association's director of governmental affairs, Branche Jones, said Garcia was going against the group to push a bill through the Democrat-controlled Legislature.

"I think she caved, from our perspective," Jones said.

Garcia declined to comment on the legislation. An aide, Sharon Gonsalves, said Garcia is still open to changes.

The San Bernardino County superintendent of schools, Herbert Fischer, said in his annual address in January that new legislation was needed to address abuses such as those at the now-defunct California Charter Academy. The Victorville-based charter school network operated four schools and more than 50 satellite sites, including campuses in San Bernardino, Colton and Rialto, before it closed in 2004.

In September, a grand jury handed down a 117-count indictment against the school's founder, Charles Steven Cox, and Tad Theron Honeycutt, a Hesperia councilman who ran businesses connected to the schools.

They are accused of illegally transferring $5.5 million from the academy to private, for-profit management companies they created to sell supplies and services back to the school.

Honeycutt and Cox have pleaded not guilty to misappropriation of public funds, grand theft and failing to file tax returns.

Garcia's bill, AB 1772, originally would have required that no more than 49 percent of a charter school's board be made up of staff or those with a financial interest in the school.

The new version would prohibit charter school board members from holding any financial interest in the school. Charter schools would have to comply with the same conflict-of-interest laws affecting public schools.

Some charter schools are started by teachers, and those schools should be allowed to have staff on their boards, Jones said.

But the San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools office and the California School Boards Association support holding charter school boards to the same standards as public school district boards.

"We think it's better for the school, better for the taxpayer," said Brian Rivas, senior legislative advocate for the California School Boards Association. He said employees who serve as board members could influence decisions on a school's contracts even if they recuse themselves from certain votes.

Kevin Gordon, a lobbyist for San Bernardino County's Superintendent of Schools office and for school districts around the state, said it's highly unusual for a sponsor to ask a legislator to carry a bill, then withdraw its support.

But, he said, a bill's sponsor must work closely with the legislator who carries a bill to address any concerns.

"In the Legislature, the sponsor of a bill doesn't own the process," Gordon said. "The legislator that authors the bill controls the bill."

Rainy Day Calculus

The following excerpt comes from a recent UESF email by Dennis Kelly. It gives a reasonably clear explanation of where we stand with the rain day funds:

Report Back from UESF Delegation to SF Controller
=================================================
Yesterday [ed: April 28th] the San Francisco City Controller and his staff provided a briefing on the Rainy Day Fund to a delegation from UESF and representatives from several City Supervisors' offices.

The law states that the triggers for the Rainy Day Fund to be released to the school district are a reduction of inflation-reduced per-pupil revenues and the noticing of significant numbers of layoffs. The Controller certified that the appropriate conditions were met to release the funds.

The law also states that the district is entitled to 25% of the total amount in the fund, or the decline in inflation adjusted per pupil revenue, whichever is less. Currently the fund holds $117.6 million, 25% of which is $29.4 million.

However, according to the Controller's office, under his calculations the decline in the inflation adjusted per pupil revenue is projected to be somewhere between $18.0 million and 19.7 million.

Although SFUSD is expecting an approximately $40 million budget shortfall to the entire budget, much of those cuts will be made to categorical funds.

According to the Controller, the total shortfall in the discretionary budget (which he is interpreting as the decline in inflation adjusted per pupil revenue) is the number somewhere between $18.0 million and $19.7 million. The amount is a range because it depends on the calculation of the education Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) by the state of California. The COLA is not set yet for next year, but is expected to be between 4.9% and 5.4%.

Therefore he is authorizing the release of the lesser amount, unless conditions in the state budget change substantially. Governor Schwarzenegger announced yesterday that the state budget crisis is around $20 billion for next fiscal year, much higher than the original projections of $14-16 billion. The number may therefore be revised upwards as we move forward.

The Rainy Day Fund will be released when the San Francisco City budget is passed, which is typically in the end of July. However, we have been informed by SFUSD that they intend to rescind a certain number of layoffs based on the promise of the funds from the Controller's office. They have stated that on or around May 8th, a further list of rescinded layoffs will be sent out.

By law the SFUSD must send out final layoff notices by May 15th.

The same material was covered in the Chron in this article: Rainy day fund comes to rescue of S.F. teachers, but the UESF report goes into clearer detail on how the $19M figure was derived.

Again, we've been pretty lax about reporting on the budget issue, so we're catching up. More to come.

Charter brouhaha rages in LAUSD

The battle in LAUSD over finding space for charter schools continues. I'm posting this article from the L.A. Daily News because SFUSD has the same issues, luckily on a smaller scale. Note that Ramon "Ray" Cortines was SFUSD superintendent in the early '90s.

Los Angeles Daily News
4/30/08
Charter-school battle unfolds
District pulls offers of campus space to schools
By Naush Boghossian, Staff Writer

Just one month after Los Angeles Unified offered space on its campuses for nearly 40 charter schools, district officials said Wednesday they have withdrawn seven of the offers and are considering yanking five more.

The withdrawals come amid a growing outcry by the teachers union as well as charter schools and traditional schools unhappy with the prospect of sharing dozens of campuses.

In a letter outlining the plan, Senior Deputy Superintendent Ray Cortines said he decided to withdraw the offers based on the "instructional impacts the charter co-location would impose."

But the move drew immediate outrage Wednesday from charter leaders who said the district is reneging on its deal and may be in defiance of Proposition 39 - a statewide ballot measure passed in 2000 that requires LAUSD and other districts to share facilities fairly among all students.

Click to read the rest of the article.

LA teachers' union fights charters' space demands

This article is directly relevant to SFUSD because of the controversies over charters' needs for space disrupting SFUSD school communities. With similar controversies erupting in LAUSD, the teachers' union there is fighting back.

Note: The conservative Los Angeles Daily News' editorial position is vigorously pro-charter, and in my opinion that is often reflected in its news coverage:

Los Angeles Daily News
4/16/08

L.A. teachers union targets pact on charters
By Naush Boghossian, Staff Writer

Launching a pitched battle against Los Angeles Unified over plans to dole out more space for the growing charter-school movement, the teachers union said Wednesday that it will aggressively campaign against traditional schools sharing sites with the popular independent schools.

Demonstrations by parents and teachers and community meetings have already begun, just days after the district offered space to more than three dozen charter schools - the most so far - as part of a settlement of a lawsuit challenging the LAUSD's lagging efforts to share its facilities under Proposition 39.

But some schools and teachers said the plans are too disruptive because they include mixing some elementary and secondary students and allocating classrooms that already are in use.

"This has to do with a bad law, and instead of the district fighting this they chose to make a settlement that will impact the educational programs at the host schools by taking away precious space," said A.J. Duffy, president of United Teachers Los Angeles.

"And having a high school or middle school on an elementary campus is total madness and a very serious potential security and safety situation for students."

Changing the law

In addition to rallying parents, teachers and community-based organizations, Duffy said, the union will begin talking with legislators about changing the charter law.
Click for the rest of the article.

Charter battle disrupts another community

Again, charter schools are a big topic in SFUSD right now, because two charters' needs for space are disrupting two vulnerable school communities. I read a lot about charter schools, and I'm currently blogging more of what I've been previously just reading and digesting, as this issue is having such an impact on our community.

In our school district, it's low-income students and families who are suffering because of this charter brouhaha. The Los Angeles Times reports on a charter flap that distressed the rich. The ultra-wealthy community of Palos Verdes, on a beautiful wooded peninsula outside L.A., has been ripped apart recently by a controversy over a proposed charter. Now the proposal has been dropped, but the ugly rift in the community will take a long time to heal.

These rich folks can take care of themselves, and my heart isn't particularly bleeding. But my point is that charters manage to spread controversy and divisiveness far and wide; these parents saw clearly the damage this one would do.

Parents who proposed the charter wanted to escape the culture of high-stakes testing (which is not a goal I disagree with). But they were working with an outfit that operates charters in San Diego and has been accused of various types of corruption and wrongdoing, so that was one little problem. Meanwhile, school officials and other parents in Palos Verdes protested that the charter would siphon resources and students away from the district, harming the existing schools and their students.

Then the unsavory charter operator from San Diego severed its ties with the Palos Verdes charter proponents, who were already apparently getting nervous about the San Diego issues, and the proposal fell apart. From the L.A. Times:

Opponents vowed to fight any future charter proposals and urged the charter parents to work with the district.

Tracey Lyons Tozier, whose two children attend Mira Catalina Elementary, said mending the community divide would take time.

"It's a shame," she said, "how many families are no longer talking to one another over this issue."

Pay $500,000, get a KIPP school in your town

My friend Karen in Houston sent me a link from the newspaper in Galveston, where folks want KIPP to open a school. KIPP told them maybe, but only if Galveston will come up with $500,000 for the school. That seems like an interesting set of terms — is that request even legal? Obviously KIPP should choose where to open schools, but requiring the money commitment seems a little unsavory, at the very least. Karen sent the Galvestonites links to our most recent KIPP commentary.

Galveston, Texas, Daily News

KIPP Asking for Help To Consider Isle Site

By Rhiannon Meyers
The Daily News

Published April 14, 2008

GALVESTON — If islanders want a nationally recognized charter school to come to Galveston, they might have to have to ask for it and come up with half a million dollars.

Officials with the Knowledge is Power Program — or KIPP — are inviting Galveston residents to submit a proposal explaining why the charter school should come to the island.

Charter school officials want to know why Galveston students are underserved by the island’s public and charter schools, what sort of facilities are open for the school to move into and how much money the community will raise to bring a KIPP school to the island.

The school requires the community to raise $500,000 to cover startup costs.

Click to read the rest of the story.

An MSM look at the burden posed by charters

The San Gabriel Valley Tribune (not really a mouthpiece for teachers' union radicals) looks at the negative impact charter schools have on school districts. Pasadena is currently grappling with the sudden financial collapse of a new charter partway through its first year.

Charter school issues are particularly relevant in SFUSD right now because of the stresses on Excelsior Middle School and James Denman Middle School caused by two charter schools' demands for sites, which Prop. 39 requires SFUSD to meet.

Charter Schools' Rise Weighs on Districts

Petitions to establish independent facilities getting more scrutiny
By Caroline An, Staff Writer
April 12, 2008

PASADENA - Financial problems that threaten to close at least one charter school in Pasadena highlight the role school districts play in approving and ultimately overseeing these independent schools.

Charters are largely independent of districts that approve them. And while they are funded by the state and are held to the same benchmark standards that public schools must adhere to, the allure of charter schools has been the freedom they have to develop their own curriculum and control their own budgets.

But district oversight of charter schools is becoming more strict, officials said.

While the majority of charters are in the Los Angeles Unified School District, charter schools - which typically cater to a certain demographic or offer a more specialized curriculum - are now beginning to make their impacts felt at school districts across the San Gabriel Valley.

District officials attribute the rise in charter schools to dissatisfaction with the quality of regular public education and, to some extent, recent decisions by school boards to close campuses to allow districts to save millions of dollars.

With the state's looming budget deficit, officials say that charter schools - now more than ever - can capitalize on these recent developments.

"The charter operators know when sites are vacant. With districts publicizing school closures, charters will exacerbate the problem," Baldwin Park Unified School District Superintendent Mark Skvarna said.

Click to read the rest of the article.

A response from KIPP, and related observations

I sent a list of questions to KIPP spokesman Steve Mancini, and he e-mailed me that he has posted the answers on KIPP's website. KIPP, the Knowledge is Power Program, is a nationwide chain of charter schools touted as a miracle solution for low-income students. KIPP is nominally based in San Francisco, reportedly to be close to major funder Don Fisher. Aside from the Fisher funding, it also gets lots more money from the usual billionaire education-reform benefactors.

KIPP schools require students and parents to sign agreements to comply with many rules. They require extra-long hours and extra days in school, including Saturdays. They teach students a set of anti-"ghetto" mannerisms and use a decibel meter in class to keep things calm. They rely on strict discipline systems based on shunning miscreants, plus a reward system paying "KIPP dollars" to spend at a "KIPP store."

The questions and answers about KIPP are more than most people want to know, but click to read them if you're curious. Steve Mancini has invited me to meet with him, which I will try to do soon.

I've been researching KIPP, as a hobby, ever since a happy KIPP parent posted proudly on the sfschools listserve a couple years ago that his daughter had "tested into" KIPP S.F. Bay Academy. Students are not supposed to have to "test into" KIPP schools.

In another incident that piqued my interest, the mother of a child with autism decided that KIPP, with its firmly structured program, was an ideal setting for her son. She applied to KIPP Bayview and was troubled that her son was given what she understood to be the entrance test in a busy setting with lots of distractions — a particular problem for an child with autism. She tells me that she complained to an administrator and was ordered off the property.

What's with the apparent entrance tests? Well, when KIPP schools (which are almost all grade 5-8 middle schools) get applicants who have completed 5th or 6th grade at other schools — who intend to apply for grades 6 or 7 — they're tested to determine their academic grade level before KIPP accepts them. Then apparently they may find out that they're in 5th grade again even though they thought they were in 6th (or 6th rather than 7th) if they want to start the KIPP school. (KIPP doesn't accept incoming 8th-graders.)

Here are some observations about KIPP schools.

1. KIPP targets low-income students of color. Its application process and program inherently self-selects for high-functioning, motivated, compliant students from high-functioning, motivated compliant families. A child from a family that's deeply entrenched in the oppositional, alienated street culture described by sociologist Elijah Anderson in "Code of the Streets" is extremely unlikely to apply to a KIPP school, or to comply with its requirements in the unlikely event that he/she does apply and get in. KIPP and schools like it attract the "decent" families (Anderson's term) — the higher-functioning families seeking a better life for their children, trying to get them away from the street culture.

If the traditional public school down the street also implemented admissions procedures and other processes that self-screened for such families, and if that schools were not automatically assigned students, would that school succeed as well as the KIPP school? We have no way of knowing.

Of course it's a good thing that KIPP schools are elevating disadvantaged students to a high academic level. My concern is the widespread belief and publicity promoting them as doing something they're not — taking the full spectrum of disadvantaged students and elevating them to that high level. That misleading portrayal is then used to compare KIPP schools unfairly to traditional public school down the street — the one that actually is accepting the full spectrum of disadvantaged students. That causes the traditional public school to lose approval and support, harming the children in that school.

2. Beyond the processes and systems that self-select for motivated families and students, which aspects of KIPP contribute most to the successes? Can different aspects of the KIPP culture be disaggregated and studied? How would these students perform without the substantial private funding KIPP gets? It appears that KIPP schools require students to repeat a grade at a higher rate than the traditional public school down the street. How much higher a rate? How does that impact the success of KIPP students? Does requiring a student to repeat a grade work more effectively with those higher-functioning, motivated, compliant students than with a disengaged, resistant, oppositional student? That's the kind of thing we don't know. It would be valuable to have that information, so that all schools could implement the best practices. It appears that because this aspect of KIPP is not illuminated or discussed, it's also not being studied. It's not even clear if it's on the radar of the various entities that study KIPP schools. (There's also the fact that being required to repeat a grade is likely to discourage less-compliant students and families from enrolling in or remaining at KIPP schools.)

3. I have already blogged about the high (in some cases astounding) attrition rate at some KIPP schools. When I researched it, six of California's then-nine KIPP schools showed high attrition overall, and very, very high attrition of the most academically challenged subgroup — either African-American or Latino boys, depending on the school. Why some KIPP schools and not others? Is this true at KIPP schools elsewhere (California's data is unusually accessible, or maybe it's just that I know how to find it)? Once again, if the students who are leaving KIPP schools are the least successful, how is that impacting the schools' success? If the traditional public school down the street had as many students leave — and, a key point, go unreplaced — what would the impact be?

4. Much of the publicity surrounding KIPP exaggerates and oversimplifies its successes. There's the pervasive implication that KIPP enrolls a full cross-section of disadvantaged inner-city kids — that those barely parented children of the street who disrupt class, roam the halls, get combative with teachers and intimidate other kids at some schools have been transformed into diligent, engaged, middle-class-behaving students at KIPP schools.

No. Those kids do not enroll at KIPP schools. Only someone fully out of touch, who has no contact with urban youth, would believe that myth — but a lot of commentators are that out of touch. KIPP enrolls the high-functioning, motivated and compliant among low-income students. Why does this matter? Because again, these claims are used to make KIPP schools look superior to the traditional public school down the street, causing that school to lose approval and support, hurting its students and all of public education.

I asked Steve Mancini about KIPP's claims about how many alumni have gone to college. Here's the way this is typically described, including on KIPP's website: KIPP runs 57 schools serving over 14,000 students. ... 80% of its graduates go on to college. Wow! KIPP has sent 11,200 students to college! But no, actually: KIPP schools are grades 5-8. The only KIPP students old enough to have reached college age attended KIPP schools that existed before 2003 — and KIPP ran only two schools at that time. Steve Mancini didn't give hard numbers, but they're not big schools. It may well be that 80% of those 14,000 current KIPP students will go on to college, after four years in high school, but at this point that implication is not accurate.

Same with the claim that "all KIPP schools have waiting lists," which is not true. Everyone pins the blame on New York Times writer Paul Tough, who made that claim without attribution or backup in a long article last year. Now it's repeated everywhere. Paul! Do-over on Journalism 1A!

5. KIPP depends on these exaggerated claims and on the positive press coverage it routinely gets to win the huge amount of private funding it attracts from the usual roster of billionaire benefactors. That also, in my opinion, leads KIPP to downplay issues such as its rate of requiring students to repeat a grade, and its schools' attrition. And this all makes it much more difficult to know what are the keys to KIPP's success and what can be emulated throughout our schools. But KIPP, being heavily dependent on that private funding, has no choice but to depend on the exaggerated claims and oversimplification, and to downplay the details and nuances that might actually illuminate how KIPP achieves its successes.

I'm not blasting KIPP schools overall. I'm saying that it's all but impossible to learn from them, to find out which parts of their program are best practices that can be emulated, because there's so much misleading publicity about them and so little illumination of the details. They could be beneficial for our entire public school system, but instead they're doing harm.

Billionaire transforms inner-city lives

From The Onion via Susan Ohanian's blog:

I'm Starting This Foundation So Inner-City Youths Will Have The Pole-Vaulting Opportunities I Never Had


By Paul LaBradford

Take a look around at the state of our schools, the violence on TV, and the drugs on our streets, and you'll see why so many of our children are struggling for a better life. These kids need someone on their side. They need a powerful force to set them on the right trajectory and keep them out of prison, or worse, the morgue. They need pole-vaulting.

That's why I'm donating $11.5 million to start the Paul LaBradford Foundation for Pole-Vaulting — because no child should grow up without access to the world's greatest sport that involves propelling oneself over a horizontal bar.

See, growing up on the hardscrabble streets of Chicago's South Side, I learned firsthand how dirty life can get. I saw friends taken out by addiction, and friends taken out by bullets. My mother was too drunk to buy us food — never mind drive me 25 miles to the nearest pole-vaulting center to distract me from the alluring call of gang life.

But I got out. I went on to Emory University where I majored in microbiology, and then got my MBA at Georgetown before starting an extremely successful private investment fund, Voyage Capital, which now manages more than $1.2 billion in assets in 11 different countries. I don't want to see the children of Chicago struggle to achieve my level of success without an essential foundation in pole-vaulting.

The statistics are sobering. Studies have shown that less than 5 percent of the poorest urban youth have adequate pole-vaulting facilities. Sadly enough, many schoolchildren have never even pole-vaulted at all, and less than 1 percent go on to pursue a career in pole-vaulting after leaving school. By comparison, 9 percent of American college students have received some exposure to the valuable character-building experience that sprinting full speed, stopping suddenly, and then elevating many feet into the air due to altered angular momentum around a fulcrum can be.

Let's make pole-vaulting a right, not a privilege.

For millions of kids, there is no hope of practicing pole-vaulting in a well-maintained, modern facility. Most scrape by with outdated, nonregulation poles and cardboard shoes. Some must rely on broomsticks nailed hastily together, or a rusted length of pipe. These poor forgotten youngsters are often forced to land on an old blood- and urine-soaked mattress or some garbage bags filled with broken glass.

We can change all that. One pole at a time.

I want to make sure that every child living in a squalid, one-bedroom tenement with no heat or hot water has access to the finest high-impact collapsible mats that money can buy. Even if they can't count on a steady father figure or even their next meal, I want them to have one place they can go for high-grade hand chalk and those special spiked sneakers pole-vaulters need to wear when they're pole-vaulting. I want these kids, hardened by grim realities of the 'hood, to trade in their guns for 11-foot fiberglass poles.

When our foundation is in place, no park or schoolyard or juvenile detention center will go without a 131.2-foot runway again. We'll hold midnight pole-vaulting events for teens. Our Head Start program will outfit preschools with miniature pole-vaulting tracks. And we'll even include our nation's at-risk seniors who are young at heart, and provide extra padding in the landing pits for their brittle, brittle bones.

But pole-vaulting is not just a way out of impossibly futile circumstances. It's also a great metaphor: The runway is like life. It's flat, and you have to run over it, planting your hands and your feet carefully at just the right moment. The bar is an event in your life, and the pole is the support of your family and God. Hitting the bar is like not succeeding, but clearing it is like overcoming obstacles. And falling to the mat is like falling onto a huge blue mat. You keep raising the bar, pushing yourself until you've reached the highest heights and there is nothing left to accomplish, no challenge to meet. Then you start a pole-vaulting foundation for underprivileged youths.

Won't you please donate today? Then we can get to work on providing shuffleboards to developing nations.

— Paul LaBradford

The Onion

2008-03-26

Do charters serve Denman, Excelsior communities?

Back to the saga of the uprooted and disrupted school communities at James Denman Middle School, Excelsior Middle School and also International Studies Academy High School (which has not really been heard from in our public sphere on this issue).

To recap: Two charter schools are demanding space under their Prop. 39 rights. City Arts & Tech Charter High School, currently renting a non-SFUSD-owned site, will move to share the June Jordan High School (SFUSD non-charter) facility, displacing Excelsior Middle School (SFUSD non-charter), which will move to share the ISA (SFUSD non-charter) facility.

(Why isn't CAT moving to ISA? We unwashed masses don't know, but don't forget that the charter operators have say in the matter and can refuse and negotiate.)

Leadership Charter High School, currently sharing the Burton High School (SFUSD non-charter) facility, will move to share the James Denman Middle School (SFUSD non-charter) facility, of which Denman is currently the sole occupant. It's not publicly known why Leadership can't/won't stay at Burton.

A letter to the editor in today's Chronicle, from someone working for a nonprofit connected with CAT (though she says she works with students from nearby non-charters too), defends the charter schools in the move. (Click and scroll down to see the letter.)

"It is not a power struggle between charter schools and middle schools," the letter-writer says.

"... The faculties and staff of City Arts and Tech, Leadership, Denman and Excelsior work with the same communities of students and all want the same things for their students. Let us not waste energy in fighting among ourselves."

So, sit down and shut up? I'm not really sure that's a solution if disadvantaged school communities feel they are being harmed and need to stand up for themselves — and/or others feel we need to speak up on their behalf.

And no, it's not specifically a struggle between charter schools and middle schools, but it is a struggle between charter schools and non-charter public schools. Sorry, but it is. And the charter schools are the aggressors.

In response to the comment that they're teaching the same communities, naturally I had to check the numbers. I looked at CAT, Leadership, Denman, Excelsior, June Jordan, ISA and also Balboa and Burton, as the two other non-charter high schools geographically closest to Denman and Excelsior middle schools.

In general that's kinda-sorta accurate. All are mostly minority to varying degrees. The significant ethnic outlier is CAT, which is 22.6% white (but plurality Latino). Of all the other schools mentioned, Balboa (plurality Chinese) has the highest white percentage at 5.2%. Excelsior (plurality African-American) is 0.5% white and Denman (plurality Latino) is 3.2% white.

All the schools have a significant percentage of free/reduced lunch students. Denman's is 66.3%, Excelsior's is 64.3%, Leadership's is 49.8%, CAT's is 41.6%. So not quite the same communities, but not totally disparate — free/reduced lunch reporting tends to drop off in high school in general.

The really big difference is that the two charters are seriously underserving English language learners, though June Jordan is pretty light there too.

ELL percentages:

CAT 6.9%
Leadership 9.4%
June Jordan 10.2%
Burton 18.5%
Balboa 18.9%
Excelsior 21.8%
Denman 24.3%
ISA 24.9%

The ELL and free/reduced lunch statistics are for 06-07 from the California Department of Education website. The ethnic breakdowns are for 07-08 from the SFUSD website.

What the father of charter schools would see today

The biographer of teachers' union pioneer Albert Shanker examines how Shanker's idea, charter schools, has evolved (or gone astray):

Education Week March 26, 2008

The Charter School Idea Turns 20
A History of Evolution and Role Reversals
by Richard D. Kahlenberg
Twenty years ago this month, in a landmark address to the National Press Club in Washington, American Federation of Teachers President Albert Shanker first proposed the creation of “charter schools” — publicly funded institutions that would be given greater flexibility to experiment with new ways of educating students. At the time, some conservative education reformers opposed the idea, saying we already knew what worked in education. Today, the positions are reversed: Conservatives largely embrace charters, while teachers’ unions are mostly opposed. How did the notion of charter schools evolve over 20 years? And might a return to Al Shanker’s original idea improve the educational and political fortunes of the charter school movement?

In Shanker’s vision, small groups of teachers and parents would submit research-based proposals outlining plans to educate kids in innovative ways. A panel consisting of the local school board and teachers’ union officials would review proposals. Once given a “charter,” a term first used by the Massachusetts educator Ray Budde, a school would be left alone for a period of five to 10 years. Schools would be freed from certain collective bargaining provisions; for example, class-size limitations might be waived to merge two classes and allow team-teaching. Shanker’s core notion was to tap into teacher expertise to try new things. Building on the practices at the Saturn auto plant in Nashville, Tenn., he envisioned teams of teachers making suggestions on how best to accomplish the job at hand. Part of the appeal of charter schools to Shanker and many Democrats was that they offered a publicly run alternative to private-school-voucher proposals, which they feared would undermine teacher collective bargaining rights and Balkanize students by race, religion, and economic status. A charter school, Shanker said, “would not be a school where all the advantaged kids or all the white kids or any other group is segregated.”
In the early 1990s, Minnesota legislators, working with Shanker, adopted the nation’s first charter school legislation. However, as the idea spread (eventually to 40 states and the District of Columbia), the father of charter schools expressed increasing alarm that his idea of teacher-led institutions had morphed into something quite different. Many conservative advocates saw charters as a way to make an end run around teachers’ unions, and the vast majority of charter schools today lack collective bargaining agreements. Likewise, states disregarded Shanker’s admonition that charter schools should be diverse, as individual charter schools often appealed to specialized ethnic, religious, or racial groups, raising the very concerns Shanker had about private school vouchers.

Shanker argued that in charter schools, rigid collective bargaining rules could be bent, but that teachers still needed union representation. Only when teachers felt secure could they take risks, he said. “You don’t see these creative things happening where teachers don’t have voice or power or influence.” Not surprisingly, lacking a collective voice, teachers in charter schools turn over at almost twice the rate of public school teachers. And while right-wingers assumed that eliminating union influence would make test scores skyrocket, a number of independent studies have found that charter schools do no better than unionized public schools. Moreover, as a practical political matter, as charter schools became a vehicle for anti-union activists, powerful education unions naturally opposed their expansion and effectively limited the ultimate growth of the experiment.

Likewise, instead of drawing diverse student populations, charter schools often explicitly appealed to particular groups, with Afrocentric or other ethnocentric curricula, or, in other cases, effectively “creamed” students, by requiring parents to sign contracts committing them to volunteer a certain number of hours or be subject to fines. Shanker noted that “children whose parents are scared off by the contract’s tone, or don’t have the time to volunteer, or can’t read, or don’t understand what is being asked, won’t be enrolling in one of these schools.” According to a 2003 report from the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University, charter schools tend to be even more racially segregated than regular public schools.

Read the rest of the commentary

The cynicism honor roll: the St. Hope miracle

Even I get sick of peeing on miracles. But I just can't stop myself from checking the numbers whenever I hear another of these claims.

Basketball star Kevin Johnson is winning big acclaim for transforming a troubled Sacramento high school into Sacramento Charter High — his charter-school operation is named St. Hope. Now he's running for mayor based on the acclaim, and working to expand his schools into major districts nationwide.

Why waste words? Here's the shorthand version of what I found when I checked the numbers after I read this on the National Alliance of Public Charter Schools blog:

..." he has turned dysfunctional Sacramento High into St. Hope Charter Schools, that last year sent 73% of graduates to four-year colleges.....and is running for Mayor. ... This guy is real class -- and good news for NYC that he's getting to open a new St. Hope charter there in the fall."

I just can't keep my itchy fingers from looking stuff up via Dataquest on the California Department of Education website.

Sacramento Charter High School, 9th grade (class of '07), 2003-04:

Total students 505

Same class, 12th grade, 06-07:

Total students 277

9th grade, 03-04, African-American boys: 72
Same class, 06-07, African-American boys: 51

9th grade, 03-04, Latino boys: 82
Same class, 06-07, Latino boys: 32

9th grade, 03-04, African-American girls: 107
Same class, 06-07, African-American girls: 81

9th grade, 03-04, Latina girls: 70
Same class, 06-07, Latina girls: 42

What a cynical b****.

Who will protect vulnerable schools?

The Chronicle coverage of the flap over the Excelsior and Denman situations gets it right in pointing to encroachment by charter schools as the problem here.

"Blindsiding ethnic minority school communities to appease aggressive charter school machinations is an injustice," Denman parent Craig Wong told the Chron's Jill Tucker.

Tucker's article sums it up here:

The district is required under the state's Proposition 39 to provide classroom facilities to charter schools that request space. Charter schools and their advocacy groups have filed lawsuits against school districts that they say don't fulfill the complicated requirements under the law.

San Francisco Unified has been threatened with such suits, which means the school board can legally meet behind closed doors to hammer out agreements and settlements with the specific charters, district officials said.

"It isn't that the staff hasn't considered the impact on the school," said school board member Jill Wynns. "We wouldn't do any of this if we didn't have to."

In following news coverage about charter schools around the state, I've seen many, many articles about situations like this: charter school demands space; school district has no choice but to come up with some; existing school (somehow always one serving low-income minorities) protests the disruption of having to share space with a second school. Now I'm sorry I haven't been archiving those articles. It's an ongoing problem and one of the ways charter schools harm other schools and their students.

The charter schools have all the power in this situation. The current interpretation of Prop. 39, which requires districts to provide sites for charter schools, allows charters to displace existing programs. The charter schools, I note as usual, are fervently backed by the Bush and Schwarzenegger administrations, their own well-funded lobbying groups such as the Center for Education Reform and the California Charter Schools Association, and the whole array of right-wing "think tanks," advocacy groups and policy organizations. Oh, and oceans of funding from the billionaires whose hobby and plaything is school reform, of course.

It's really time for advocates to stop feeling like they can't speak up lest they offend someone and start protesting this situation. As we've seen in SFUSD, it's the schools that largely serve low-income minorities that wind up the targets. Those who defend this situation need to step up and say, "Put it at my school." Miraloma? McKinley?

SFUSD handled this badly. But that is not the root of the problem. The laws giving charter schools the right to do this and the clout to wreak as much havoc as they want are the problem.
I just wonder when the situation will get extreme enough that activists become willing to step on some toes to raise a protest.

Quoting from Sharon Higgins' Perimeter Primate blog:

Some of the primates position themselves at the perimeter of the group - where they sit, and watch.

Their role is to warn the inner, oblivious members of the group about dangers that approach.

I already know the charter folks' responses will be: "Nobody reads your charter rants ... ho hum ... whatever..." As the charter defenders don't seem to have any actual case they can make in response to this and other criticisms, they routinely resort to ridicule. I'm sorry that's the case, because I would like to hear how they defend this situation.

Excelsior Middle School's shabby treatment

While most observers of the district have been focusing their attention on the enrollment process, there has been another story developing that deserves more attention. Excelsior Middle School, a small, young school serving a predominately minority community, will be moving from its Excelsior district location to be colocated with ISA on Potrero Hill. The move is part of a series of moves that are needed to accommodate City Arts and Technology Charter School, who will move into Excelsior's vacated facility.

Being pushed around to make room for a charter is problematic for many reasons, but it is an inevitable consequence of the way school districts are forced to accept charters and forced to provide facilities for them.

What is inexcusable is the lack of consultation and communication with the affected school communities. In this case the Excelsior families were completely shut out of the process and left in the dark. Only now, after the move was belatedly announced to the school staff and students, has the district finally made some effort to contact the families. Only now, after many activists have raised concerns about the process, has the district granted the affected families priority access to the enrollment process.

All of this is happening too late, and only after the district hand has been forced.

A rough sketch of the timeline of this story goes something like this:

• CAT, the charter school, has been negotiating with the district for a new facility. When I toured there in November they told prospective parents that they were close to finalizing the location and would have definitive word before the enrollment deadline in January.
• We chose not to enroll there, so I don't know when the school told their community about the results of the negotiations. Reportedly, CAT has known about the move for some time.
• On March 6th the district tells the Excelsior staff about the move.
• Round 1 enrollment lottery results are mailed out around March 8th, starting the Round 2 process.
• The students are told on March 12th, but no effort has been made to reach the parents.
• At this point the school officials note that they are trying to arrange a meeting with district staff and parents in the April timeframe.
• News of the move, and the utter failure of the district to involve or notify parents, travels through the activist networks, including PPS and SfSchools lists.
• Finally the district takes steps to contact families and give them access to the enrollment process.

School Beat does some excellent reporting on this story in Excelsior and Denman Middle School Families Deserve Equitable Treatment, concluding with this precient commentary:

We, as public school supporters, as engaged parents, and as fellow residents of this city, have to pull the emergency brake and make sure that SFUSD’s new administration shows that it isn’t business as usual in how they make decisions, especially hard decisions with as big an impact as school mergers, moves and closures. Fundamentally, it really is a question of equity.

The role of the charter school rules in foisting this move on the district and the affected school communities is another story that needs to be told. But the immediate concern has to be the interests of the affected schools and families. I'm glad to see the district and the EPC taking belated steps to correct their mistakes. We need to bear witness to this injustice so that it is not repeated in the future.

Another contentious charter school move

A parent from James Denman Middle School alerts me that Leadership Charter High School is preparing to move in and to share space at Denman. The parent says this will displace teachers and classrooms, and disrupt facilities (such as the library) that will have to fit in high-school-level resources.

Leadership just moved to the campus of Phillip and Sala Burton High School at the beginning of this (07-08) school year. Nobody has yet explained why it wants to leave that campus. (Leadership was previously in an SFUSD-owned property next to Denman Middle School that as I understand it is not legal for long-term occupancy by a school under the Field Act, which requires school buildings to meet earthquake safety standards.)

I posted about this on the sfschools listserve and an unidentified poster responded with the message (paraphrasing): Let's not gossip about where Leadership might go; let's talk about SFUSD's failure to communicate properly.

Speaking of failure to communicate properly, though — the issue to the Denman community IS where Leadership might go.

The Denman parent also tells me that Leadership teachers don't want to move to Denman. Previously, a Leadership insider told me they didn't want to move to Burton. At that time I asked her what they did want, and she didn't know. So what do they want this time?

Another question about Leadership is: What's going on with its plummeting enrollment? Small schools by design are one thing, but is this by design?

Incoming 9th grade classes year by year (total students):
03-04 96
04-05 93
05-06 79
06-07 69
07-08 37

Maybe some of the charter school insiders who read this blog can enlighten us. Why is Leadership requesting a new site, why don't they want to move to Denman, what site DO they want, and what's with the plunging enrollment?

Who needs expertise? Anyone can run schools

That's a pretty pervasive mentality.

Last week the Richmond (Calif.) City Council discussed looking into taking 10 Richmond elementary schools away from the West Contra Costa County school district, which includes Richmond, and either having them run by the city or turning them into charter schools. The Contra Costa Times reported on Feb. 21 that the council voted 5-1 with 1 abstention to hire a consultant to study the notion.

The council was under the impression that the school district was planning to close some schools and postpone upgrades to others.

It turned out that wasn't the case — the WCC school board mea-culpa'd the communications gap — so the Richmond council changed its mind, as reported on Feb. 28.

If those city councilmembers think they can just step up and run a school, why not me? That's the mentality behind the charter school concept to begin with. Doesn't the notion that it's perfectly rational to turn complicated operations over to gung-ho amateurs — and shun experience and expertise — strike anyone else as bizarre? Why not do that with the Fire Department? S.F. General Hospital? How about Muni? I can get the 36 Teresita to come every 20 minutes like it's supposed to. Or SFO. I'll get those security lines moving. Hand over the funding.

It was listening to a speech in that vein by then-Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown, some six years ago, that got my charter school skepticism going to begin with. He was about to launch his Oakland School for the Arts and Oakland Military Institute charters, and was all a-gloat about how superior they'd be to schools run by stupid, contemptible old teachers and administrators. (Both schools have struggled. They're still afloat due to Brown's determined promotion and fundraising. And he recently hired an actual veteran educator to rescue floundering Oakland School for the Arts.)

Richmond Mayor Gayle McLaughlin was the one vote against the idea of the city's taking over schools. Councilman Jim Rogers abstained with the "no duh" comment of the day: "I don't believe the city of Richmond has established that we have the expertise, the ability to go in and start trying to run schools."

For KIPP wonks only

This is only for those who really like to wallow in KIPP minutiae: I e-mailed these questions to KIPP PR spokesperson Steve Mancini. He sent me a friendly response saying he's on the road but would like to meet for lunch when he gets back. I thought I'd share the questions (which I would HOPE someone has asked before, given all the coverage of KIPP schools).

1. I know that incoming KIPP students at grades above 5 are tested to determine their grade level. I am not clear whether students incoming from 4th grade, applying to 5th grade, are also given that testing. Are applicants for 5th grade tested to determine their grade level? If they test below 5th grade, are they still admitted? (If not, I may have follow-up questions.)
   
   
2. I know that students who have completed 5th grade at other schools and are applying for 6th grade ARE tested to determine their grade level. What percentage overall are determined to be at 5th-grade level and told that they will need to repeat 5th grade (this time at KIPP) to be admitted? What percentage are determined to be at 6th-grade level and admitted to grade 6? (I'm assuming there may be some in other categories; see question 3, or they might test ahead of grade.)
   
   
3. If applicants in that category (completed 5th grade at other school, applying to KIPP for 6th) test BELOW 5th-grade level, are they still accepted to 5th grade at KIPP?
   
   
4. Of applicants in that category (completed 5th grade at other school, applying to KIPP for 6th) who are told they will need to repeat grade 5, this time at KIPP, how many of them then enroll at KIPP?
   
   
5. Of applicants in that category (completed 5th grade at other school, applying to KIPP for 6th) who test at 6th-grade level and do not have to repeat a grade, how many then enroll at KIPP?
   
   
6. What percentage of KIPP students who have completed grades 5, 6 or 7 at KIPP are told they need to repeat a grade (disaggregating for each grade)? Do you have information on how that compares to averages at traditional public schools?
   
   
7. What percentage of KIPP students who have completed grade 8 at KIPP are told they need to repeat grade 8 to graduate? Do you have information on how that compares to averages at traditional public middle schools?
   
   
8. I have often read a claim that a high percentage (though the number given varies) of KIPP students go on to college.
   
   Here's the first hit on Google News as of right now, for example: "According to Feinberg, 90 percent of KIPP's middle school students go to college..."
   
   As you are aware, KIPP runs middle schools, so only students who finished 8th grade in 2003 or earlier would be at college age now (high school graduating class of 2007). KIPP has run only a small number of schools for that long — Jay Mathews of the Washington Post told me the number is two. So I know we're talking about quite a small number of students. However, my question is: Does KIPP have an official mechanism/process for tracking those students? What is it and how does it work? Has KIPP succeeded in following 100% of its alumni who finished Grade 8 in 2003 or earlier, and if not, what percentage has it successfully tracked?
   
   
9. I frequently read, including on KIPP's website, that "all KIPP schools" have waiting lists. However, San Francisco's two KIPP schools do not have waiting lists, at least for grade 5, as is clear from multiple indicators. Do San Francisco's two KIPP schools have waiting lists for other grades? Since that information is incorrect about San Francisco's two KIPP schools, can you clarify what percentage of KIPP schools do have waiting lists for grade 5?
   
   
10. Why does KIPP start its schools at grade 5 when apparently most districts where it operates have K-5 feeder schools? Do many students leave the feeder schools after grade 4, or is that to allow a high number of students to repeat grade 5 in the KIPP school?

I will of course post whatever responses I get.

Charters can force L.A. teachers out of classrooms

A lawsuit by the California Charter Schools Association will force existing schools to give up space to charter schools, including leaving teachers with no classrooms, according to the Los Angeles Times. This very same setup was proposed last school year for Balboa High School here in SFUSD, to make room for Leadership Charter High School. After protest, the plan was scrapped (Leadership now shares space at Burton High School, a move that did not force teachers to give up classrooms.)

Settlement opens door to charter schools in L.A.
By Howard Blume
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
February 13, 2008

More Los Angeles campuses will have to make room for charter schools, even if some teachers are forced to give up their classrooms and become roving instructors, under a litigation settlement approved by the Los Angeles Board of Education on Tuesday.

The agreement requires the school district to inventory all properties and work directly with charter schools to find space on or off campus.

Charter advocates say finding and paying for facilities is their No. 1 challenge.The settlement signals "new cooperation" toward serving all students -- whether they attend a charter or a traditional school, supporters said. "We share the pain of overcrowding equally," said Caprice Young, president of the California Charter Schools Assn., a party to both suits. "We in the charter school movement recognize that the Los Angeles Unified School District has a space crunch, and we all have to work together to create great facilities for all kids."

Agreeing to the possibility of roving instructors, called "traveling teachers," was perhaps the major -- and most controversial -- concession by the school district. Because of classroom shortages, these teachers move from room to room with cartloads of materials throughout the day, an intensely unpopular assignment.

The school district could provide no figures on how many teachers travel, but their numbers have declined dramatically in recent years with the construction of new schools and declining enrollment.Two lawsuits were filed in May under a state law that calls for public school campuses to be "shared fairly." Charters are independently run public schools freed from many provisions that govern other schools, including adherence to union contracts and district curriculum.

Click for the rest of the story.

L.A. Times: The Myth of Charter School Success

Two academics hit back at billionaire developer Eli Broad's praise of charter schools.

The myth of charter school success
Los Angeles Times
Feb. 12, 2008
By Walter P. Coombs and Ralph E. Shaffer

Philanthropists say their donations help create a winning system;
two professors say the game is rigged.

Critics of public education have argued for years that throwing money at public schools doesn't solve the "education crisis." Now come Eli Broad (who revealed his formula for charter school "success" last week), Bill Gates, the Annenbergs, Hunts, Waltons and other billionaires who willingly pour vast sums of money into "public" education provided they can designate where it goes and how it will be used. Apparently, throwing money at the schools is acceptable if you get to call the shots.

In the last decade, conservative philanthropists have given hundreds of millions of dollars to establish their own agendas. The most recent announcement, January's grant of a paltry $23 million by Broad, was typical of this modern philanthropy. Instead of truly aiding public education, Broad chose to subsidize several privately operated charter school conglomerates in the Los Angeles area. Principal beneficiaries of his largess were the highly-regimented KIPP schools and the misnamed Aspire Public Schools. The only thing public about either system is that they are supported by California taxpayers. Broad's grant is but a fraction of the amount given to these schools by the state.

Typical charter schools such as Green Dot, which Broad also subsidizes with what are probably tax-deductible gifts, are privately controlled and run by unelected, self-appointed boards that are effectively unaccountable to the public. The State Board of Education and the state agency that "oversees" charters are now dominated by pro-charter appointees.

KIPP, Aspire and Green Dot have "succeeded" because a relatively small number of motivated parents and students have voluntarily withdrawn from the Los Angeles Unified School District, believing that the district has not coped with the massive problems facing public education in urban California today.

From the day the Supreme Court ruled that schools must end segregation, including the de facto system in California's urban schools, a steady flow of white children left our public schools. Forced busing dramatically escalated that. Education-oriented parents who might have kept the schools on their toes no longer had any interest in the public schools, as their children were now attending private institutions.

Simultaneously, the percentage of nonnative students enrolled in the public schools skyrocketed. Many had extremely limited English language skills and their parents often could not speak English at all. That's a recipe for educational disaster.

KIPP, Aspire and Green Dot don't face that problem. Through what amounts to a contract with parents and students, they screen their applicants and admit a clientele that, in a traditional public school, would do as well or better than they are doing in the charter school.

If Broad's pet charters had to accept 3,000 limited-English, low-income students from ethnic backgrounds that include a high percentage of single-parent families, with widespread gang involvement and little commitment to education, scores that the charters now trumpet would fall significantly. But working with a select group of students who would score well at any school, Broad's charters garner only somewhat better-than-average test scores — despite the massive amount of public and private money poured into them.

Charters claim that their schools score far better than traditional public schools serving similar students. That's not true. The students at Locke or any of the other at-risk high schools in LAUSD are not "similar students" when compared to those who have left the public schools and moved to the charters. What Broad, Green Dot and the others do not reveal is the scores of those charter students when they were in regular public schools. It's our belief that those students were already outscoring their fellow students in the traditional schools before they moved into charters. Low-scoring students do not enroll in Broad's charters. His charters have skimmed off the education-oriented kids who otherwise would be raising test scores for traditional public schools.

We challenge Broad or any of his fellow privateers to fund a demonstration project within the conventional public schools. Let LAUSD administrators and faculty develop an experimental public school for all types of students, giving the teachers the opportunity to develop an initiative on their own consistent with traditional educational values.

Walter P. Coombs and Ralph E. Shaffer are professors emeriti at Cal Poly Pomona.

Who keeps the Martians under wraps? We do!

I know I'm always yammering about the "right-wing publicity machine" and similar wording. I know such an entity exists, but I still probably sound like a paranoid.

Hendrik Herzberg in the New Yorker had just the right phrase, though: "...the conservative infrastructure of think tanks and policy journals." That's what I mean when I refer to the force behind the push for privatization, charter schools, vouchers, the KIPPs and Edisons and Green Dots and White Hats and the rest of the simplistic solutions — and the notion that public schools are a disaster and doomed to oblivion.

(The title of this post is a line from the song of the Stonecutters secret organization on "The Simpsons.")

Surprise! Eli Broad likes charter schools!

An anonymous commentator has requested that we post a commentary by development multigazillionaire/megafunder Eli Broad (rhymes with toad) praising charter schools. Here it is!

Disturbing ethics by BeyondChron and CES

A commentary posted on BeyondChron today violates basic journalistic standards and misleads the reader with a dishonest statement.

The commentary, written by Brett Bradshaw, praises small schools and the Coalition of Essential Schools.

Nowhere does the commentary mention that Brett Bradshaw is the Director of Strategic Communication (that is, the PR spokesperson) for the Coalition of Essential Schools (CES).

This lapse is an ethical problem for BeyondChron — which, as the name implies, positions itself as higher-level journalism than the mainstream San Francisco Chronicle. It's also an ethical lapse by CES.

As to the misleading information, the commentary makes this statement:

"CES network schools around the country have higher achievement levels on every measure of success..."

Yet as that statement relates to San Francisco's June Jordan School for Equity, which the op-ed praises highly, it's inaccurate. June Jordan, as previously noted, actually has the lowest score of all general San Francisco public high schools on the state's Academic Performance Index -- and also has the district's highest truancy rate.

I understand that test scores are only one measure, but it's still inaccurate to refer to "higher achievement levels on every measure of success" when that's entirely untrue of the example here in our midst.

We followers of education issues are frequently subjected to misleading claims and deceptive commentary by parties with a concealed self-interest. My understanding is that it's a basic CES principle not to engage in deception. That was violated here.

In addition, BeyondChron has (not for the first time, unfortunately) violated a basic journalistic principle. The mainstream Chronicle violates its own journalistic principles at times, but at least it claims to have principles. BeyondChron has no established standards that I can spot and no reader comments section. It picks and chooses which e-mailed comments to post and whether to respond to criticism. So it's unknown whether BeyondChron will repair this ethical lapse.

Yanking control away from local school boards

This op-ed from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution voices outrage at a proposed Georgia bill that would allow the state to approve charter schools and force them into districts where local school boards had previously rejected them.

The interesting thing is that this is already the case in California and many other states, and few eyebrows other than mine are raised over it — in fact, my impression is that Georgia must be a rarity in not already allowing it.

The editorial writer has it right when she points out:

HB 881 represents a frontal assault on the constitutional powers of school boards and a shift of critical decision-making to a political commission that will have no firsthand knowledge of the district's needs, the local system's own development plans or whether the charter applicants have any credibility or relationships in the community.

Nor will the commission have any accountability to local voters, who, if angry over their school board member's resistance to charters, could always vote the rascal out of office. Those voters will have no recourse against the actions of this commission, which will operate in de facto anonymity, most likely in a nice suite of state offices in Atlanta.

It's unclear whether the editorialist knows that this is the norm in other states. Her outrage is absolutely warranted; the question is why nobody else seems to share it. The whole editorial is here.

The Social Impact of Private School 101

I was chatting with my neighbors about their preschool search for their toddler, and the question of public vs. private K-12 came up. When I brought up the issue of values and social impact, I realized that the topic requires a lot of background and a thoughtful presentation to be clear to someone who’s new to the subject.

Parents of a 2-year-old haven't had reason to think about these complexities, and my neighbors were receptive. It wasn’t a situation where I was guilt-tripping someone over their done-deal choices. But it's still hard to impart The Morality and Social Impact of Private School 101 in a brief conversation. Here’s a better effort.

Private schools had neutral impact on public education until some recent time, perhaps 15 or 20 years ago. Back then, public education was not under attack; schools and teachers were respected; the populace still assumed that it was worth paying taxes to provide the services that maintain a civilized society; privatization was not on the radar.

No one — and certainly not the reigning political philosophy — was trying to eliminate public school, as many forces of the right are now.Since then, a perfect storm has come howling in and battered public education. It's based in the privatization movement combined with the anti-tax, "you're on your own," anti-public-spirited attitude that has settled like an icy fog over our culture.

Meanwhile, we Baby Boomers started a trend toward the middle class's adopting lifestyles that were formerly reserved for a lofty elite (I have happily participated in this trend, I admit, when it involved world travel and good restaurants). No longer was private school reserved for the aristocracy.

Today we make demands on public schools that were unheard of a few decades ago, and no one can argue with most of them. Disabled students should have full rights (a concept that began in the '70s). Low-income and nonwhite kids should achieve equal success in school (no one in power cared about this 60 years ago). All kids should graduate from high school (it used to be the unquestioned norm for many working-class kids to drop out).

(On the other hand, I personally don't agree that it's realistic to turn all kids into college material, though that's a demand put on public school nowadays too.)

And in diverse communities, schools are expected to diversify even when neighborhoods are segregated, and are attacked when they don't manage it perfectly (though no diverse urban school district has ever achieved ideal success with this).

Teachers are bashed incessantly over these issues and untold others.

Despite all this, many (most?) public schools are giving students good educations in safe, nurturing, stimulating environments. The others are those that face a critical mass of challenges.

In this climate, public schools need all the support they can get. They especially need to enroll the students who bring with them resources, preparation for schoolwork, supportive and involved parents, and other benefits of the privileged.In encouraging advantaged families to leave public school, "you take out all the people with the power to bring change,” a former headmaster of elite Marin Country Day School declared in an October 2007 article in San Francisco Magazine, "Schools Gone Wild."

That article explored the "more-is-better" frenzy to scale up already-posh Bay Area private schools into Xanadu-like palaces of excess. Author Diana Kapp described "an educational arms race that’s almost certainly not in the best interests of the kids whose best interests we’re all trying to serve."

This doesn't mean it's wrong to choose private school if you feel that's the best thing for your kids. It's also not wrong to drive a large sport-utility vehicle or live in a gated community if you feel that serves your family's needs. I have friends who do all those things. But mindful people are aware of the social impact of those choices, and consider that in making the decision.It’s sometimes hard to get that point across, because while the negative social impact of driving a Hummer is evident to anyone well informed, the negative social impact of private school doesn't get much public illumination,

Another oddity: In San Francisco, parents regularly criticize aspects of our school district — often as justification for choosing private — when private is no better in those aspects. You'd think the expectations would be higher for private when it costs $15-$20K a year, but oddly, parents often don't seem to see that. They seem to expect MORE from the free public school.

• Everyone wants a neighborhood public school they can walk to. The notion of a neighborhood private school you can walk to doesn't exist, except possibly with some parish schools.
  
• The private-school enrollment process, with its playdates and tests and interviews and screenings, is enormously more onerous and labor-intensive than SFUSD's.
  
• The private-school process is no more certain than SFUSD's, depending (in both cases) on what schools you apply to. If your child is not desirable to private schools, it's far less certain than SFUSD's — you may be shut out of private school entirely.
  
• If your child doesn't get your chosen SFUSD school (initially), it was as a faceless number in a lottery, bad luck of the draw. If a private school rejects your child, it was a thought-out personal rejection based on a close assessment of your child and family; a decision that your child and your family were less appealing and worthy than other applicants.
  

The student in this unit of Morality and Social Impact of Private School 101 may now ask: But aren't private schools better? And that's another blog post, or many of them. There is not a clear-cut yes or no.

I'll finish with two points that I've made before.

• My son attends an SFUSD high school that attracts many kids from private K-8s. Kids from SFUSD schools and private K-8s (and some suburban schools) mingle in classes. There are no clear-cut lines — no pattern of private school kids' being smarter or better educated. There are smart, diligent, engaged high achievers from both SFUSD and private schools; there are struggling or disaffected students from both; there are students in between from both. When 11th-graders at the school took the PSAT (Preliminary SAT) this fall, the top scorers were announced publicly. Three students tied for top score. Two of them had attended SFUSD schools K-8; I don’t know the K-8 background of the third. That may be methodologically meaningless, but it still tells me something.
  
• Yes, the SFUSD enrollment process can be harrowing. It's nowhere near as bad as the private school process unless you have a perfect child whom any private school would die for. But it's admittedly not suburbia, where you really can just walk in and enroll in the nearby school. That said, many families get their first-choice SFUSD school, and the vast majority get one of their choices in the first lottery round. I've known dozens and dozens of families who have gone through the SFUSD enrollment process, and I've never met or heard of anyone who didn't get a school they were happy with if they actually stuck it out through the process (as opposed to giving up early). You know all those families you've heard of who "couldn't get" a school they wanted? They dropped out after the first lottery round and pursued something else. Honest, I guarantee it.

As a public-school advocate and SFUSD booster, I wish the process weren't so stressful. Between the fact that the most popular schools (an increasing number) have more applicants than openings, and the pressure/need to diversify schools, there's no easy answer. But you will get a school you're happy with if you stick with the process.

For the basics on public school in SFUSD, join Parents for Public Schools, http://www.ppssf.org/ .

More millions for KIPP schools

Developer Eli Broad just donated $12 million to four L.A.-area KIPP schools (plus another $12 million to Aspire, another charter chain).

The L.A. Times followed the news of the donation with an intelligently reported (to the eye of a KIPP skeptic) profile of one of the KIPP schools.

All those who think it's a good idea to keep fifth-graders in school for 10-hour days and then add two to three hours of homework — and to make a student feel like she wants "to cut her wrists every morning" — raise your hands. (And Sit Up, Listen, Ask Questions, Nod and Track the Speaker With Your Eyes — this is KIPP's SLANT policy, required of all students.)

Strict rules mark schools
Pupils' workloads are heavy at L.A. charter sites that have drawn a billionaire's support.
By Jason Song, L.A. Times, Jan. 18, 2008

Antonio Chavez spends 10 hours a day at school and two or three doing homework because he wants to go to UCLA. He isn't sure what to major in. "I need some time to learn what my interests are," he says.

Fifth-graders generally do.

Click to read the rest of the article...

The KIPP sun-n-surf scandal

The New York press is all over the KIPP Caribbean trips. The New York Sun coverage includes info that came from this very blog about a previous similar incident.

N.Y. officials ding KIPP's financial practices

Is anyone minding this store in San Francisco?

Press release from the office of Thomas P. DiNapoli,
New York State Comptroller, Dec. 6, 2007
DiNAPOLI: KIPP IMPLEMENTS ADDITIONAL INTERNAL CONTROLS
AS A RESULT OF AUDIT
School Paid for Staff Retreats to the Caribbean

Kipp Academy Charter School in the Bronx paid $67,951 for staff trips to the Dominican Republic and the Bahamas, according to an audit released today by State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli. While the school had an operating surplus in 2006, the audit also found several deficiencies in the school’s internal controls.

"Having surplus funds is no excuse to spend taxpayer dollars on trips to the Caribbean," DiNapoli said. "Money intended for education should be spent on education. Staff retreats are an important tool that can lead to enhanced educational settings for students. But there are lots of places for retreats right here in New York State that are closer to the Bronx than the Bahamas."

Auditors discovered the school paid $67,951 to send 21 staff members to the Dominican Republic in June 2005 for five days and 49 staff members to the Bahamas in June 2006 for five days. Auditors could not determine if the trips were educational in nature because there was little documentation supporting this claim and no documentation of Board’s approval for the trips. The trips cost about $1,119 and $907 per person respectively and included airfare, hotel, meals and other amenities such as alcoholic beverages.

Under the state law that authorized the creation of charter schools, all funds provided to charter schools by the state should be reasonable, necessary and directly related to school operations. School officials contend that donated funds were used to finance the trips. However, auditors could not determine if this was the case because donated funds were not accounted for separately from state aid.

The audit found the school had accumulated a $4.1 million operating surplus as of June 30, 2006 but also identified several weaknesses in it