This is the first in a series of posts regarding the charter school bills that were introduced last week in the state legislature.
The post to follow was written by a contributor.
Dora
Washington State voters have turned down charter schools three times in the past. Voters twice rejected charter school initiatives and repealed a charter school law passed by the legislature and signed by the governor. The charter school issue is back like a persistent kid, not satisfied with an initial rejection of a request for something, who keeps asking until the parents wear down and give in.
The charter school issue is back in the form of HB 2428 and companion SB 6202: Establishing alternative forms of governance for certain public schools. What value is there to having charter schools in Washington State? Will the targeted educationally disadvantaged students across the state benefit from charter schools or will benefits lie elsewhere?
Section 115 of both bills addresses the number of charter schools allowed in the state should this legislation pass.
Sec. 115. NUMBER OF CHARTER SCHOOLS. (1) A maximum of fifty charter schools may be established statewide under this chapter. No more than ten charter schools may be established each calendar year. These annual allocations are cumulative so that if the maximum number of allowable new charters is not reached in any given year the maximums are increased accordingly for the successive years, but in no case may the total number exceed fifty without further legislative authorization.
What might these numbers mean in terms of serving the educationally disadvantaged students across the state and the benefits of having charter schools? Consider looking at this in three ways: 1) the number of schools, 2) the enrollment, and 3) the dollars per student.
There are about 1,900 schools in Washington state with an enrollment greater than 100. If 50 of those schools were charter schools, only 2.6% of the schools in the state would be charter schools established with the purpose of meeting the needs of the educationally disadvantaged students across the state.
Consider enrollment in terms of average school enrollment and well above average enrollment. The average enrollment of the nearly 1900 schools in WA is about 540. If each of 50 charter schools had an average enrollment they would serve 27,000 students, or 2.6% of the statewide enrollment of 1,024,711. A school enrollment of 1,500 is well above average with 74 schools in the state, or 4%, of Washington state schools having an enrollment this larger or larger. If each of 50 charter schools had an above average enrollment of 1,500 students, 7,500 students, or 7.3% of Washington students would be served. The estimate of 7.3% is on the high end. 2.6% is more realistic even though it could also be high. Will having charter schools serving a possible 2.6% of the state’s schools or students really address the needs of the educationally disadvantaged students in the state?
(Data in the OSPI Washington State Report Card 2011 Data Files Demographic Information by District was used for the calculations presented above. Schools with enrollment of less than 100 and their student enrollment figures were not used in the above calculations.)
If an approximate amount of $10,000 per student per year of taxpayer’s money is used, the estimated 27,000 students that may be served by charter schools will generate $270,000,000. Who will benefit?
(Washington State School Districts Per Pupil All Expenditure—Four-Year Average by County shows a per FTE expenditure of $9,982.69 for the school 2004-2005 fiscal year. An approximate $10,000 per student per year is used for the calculations presented above.)
President Obama and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan have called for states with charter schools to lift their caps on the number of charter schools allowed and not limit their growth. Will the pressure, and possible coercion, from the federal level result in a legislature that acquiesces in the future to these demands?
Are parents, voters, taxpayers, and local community members willing to have the state create more layers of bureaucracy without any opportunity for elected representation in the governance of charter schools that likely will serve 2.6% of our schools or students? The current legislation calls for the creation of a commission as a state agency. Commission members will be appointed. Charter schools will have their own appointed or selected board of directors. There is no provision in the legislation for the public to have elected representation in the governance of charter schools. School choice? It is possible that parents of 2.6% of the students in the state will have charter schools as a choice for their child. They will not have, even as a taxpayer and voter, a choice in the governance of a charter school in their local community.
What is the value of charter schools in Washington State? Is it the opportunity that may be provided to the state’s educationally disadvantaged students? Is it the opportunity for nonprofits to capitalize on a possible $10,000 per student? Is it the opportunity provided to for profit corporations? Charter schools’ appointed school boards are allowed to contract with for profit corporations to provide instructional services and manage and operate the schools. Who benefits? Or should the question be who benefits most?
HB 2428 – 2011-12 Establishing alternative forms of governance for certain public schools.
http://apps.leg.wa.gov/billinfo/summary.aspx?year=2012&bill=2428
SB 6202 – 2011-12 Establishing alternative forms of governance for certain public schools.
http://apps.leg.wa.gov/billinfo/summary.aspx?bill=6202&year=2012
Charter school feud to raise its head again in state
http://heraldnet.com/article/20120115/NEWS01/701159917/-1/NEWS02
Designing Smart Charter School Caps
http://www.educationsector.org/publications/designing-smart-charter-school-caps
OSPI Washington State Report Card 2011 Data Files Demographic Information by District
http://reportcard.ospi.k12.wa.us/DataDownload.aspx
Washington State School Districts Per Pupil All Expenditure—Four-Year Average by County
http://k12.wa.us/safs/PUB/FIN/0405/0405%20pdf%20reports/SDAllFndc.pdf\
I’m not a lawyer, but, it is obvious there are 2 sets of legal ‘people’ in our society. There are over 18 years of age legal adult human people, and then there are non-human people legal fictions which are allowed to act as people, and who have corrupted laws governing their behavior such that they are NOT accountable like human people.
WHO benefits from Charters ?
There are all these legal entity non human people organizations where the humans get to spend money on their human … stuff …, and there are lots of human people collecting paychecks, collecting perks, getting expense paid trips to junkets to sell their snake oil —
IF we had OPEN and simple reporting, we’d be able to $ee very quickly WHO would benefit – and when it is kids with few or no resources, it will be by accident.
I had looked at the Kipp & TFA 990’s on Guidestar.org a year or so ago, and Wendy Kopp & her hubby (the head of Kipp) were taking in over 500k or 600k a year running their respective not-for-profits.
Let me honest about my prejudices – when I hear “not for profit” I think of the workers in the soup kitchen, the souls standing next to the Salvation Army kettle ringing the bell – $600 grand a YEAR ain’t “not for profit” in my narrow mind. I suppose that if you graduated from Princeton and Harvard a few decades ago, as did Wendy & her hubby, and I suppose if you live in NYC, and I suppose that if your classmates are the people who steal hundreds of millions PER YEAR while wrecking the economy for hundreds of millions of citizens – SIX HUNDRED GRAND is chump change?
rmm.
Charles,
Parents are a variable and they always will be.
Public schools have to take that into account as they do many other variables such as poverty, health issues, the ability level of each child, etc.
Funding should not be a variable. It should be sufficient for all children to succeed, no matter what their circumstances.
I am a single parent and I know how hard it is to be involved in a child’s life. It’s not easy and sometimes just about impossible. Many times I had to rely on other parents to speak for me and what was in the best interest of my child.
It’s easy to blame parents but it isn’t fair.
Dora
We have laws regarding truancy, child neglect and child abuse that are routinely ignored. As long as adults can do this without consequence we are sending a powerful message that responsibility is optional just as auto insurance and driver’s licenses have become.
Tolerance of inappropriate behavior is rampant in this state.
That might be true but it is not what the topic of this post is about.
Dora
I disagree. If we are to improve education in this state, and charter schools might illustrate ways to do this we will have to engage reluctant parents.
I have two grandchildren in charter schools. One is Massachusetts and one in Texas.
Because they have parent engagement, I believe this is significant,, the skill level of both of these kids exceeds what I see when I tutor here.
They are both in first grade. The one in Massachusetts reads without hesitation, does 4 digit addition and has a 200 word French vocabulary. I would suggest that this can’t be found in our schools.
The local high school, where the graduates of this school go, has had to increase its Latin offerings in middle schools and offer French 5 to 9th graders to accommodate these kids.
Know any schools around here that have these problems?
Parent engagement!
I can think of less expensive ways to engage parents than spending $33M every other year for an additional layer of administrative costs than instituting charter schools in our state.
You can’t legislate parent engagement, sorry.
Yes, it is vitally important that parents be involved with their children but having charter schools will not affect or change what you are referring to.
Dora
I disagree for those whose parents decide to become engaged and attend successful charter schools and this might send a message to some others. Help me with the $33M as a cost for these schools. Is this another case of excessive bureaucracy that often accompanies education in this state?
Again, if we had any backbone we would demand more parent engagement. Other places do this with remarkable success. Here we seem far more interested in operating juvenile social halls than learning centers. Doesn’t happen in high achieving locales.
*graduate … that’s what happens when I’m angry LOL
Many if not most large charter school “networks” are franchises that involve for-profit education or management corporations or both. Private corporations are funding this push. If this is not so, the bill’s sponsors should prove it by amending it to limit subcontractors to non-profits. The profit motive creates winners and losers. It has no place in public education. Let’s let the 2011 Innovation schools bill work instead.
We certainly have lots of losers in this state at this time. Most of the students in at least one high school in my district are likely to become “losers” upon graduation, assuming they get that far.
Why is there this concern over “private” firms? We have plenty of this in higher education and many are quite successful for themselves and their clients.
I work at a charter school in Oregon. The highly qualified, certified teachers are kept at a part-time salary so they don’t get benefits — although many work over 40 hours a week. Most of the money goes into the pockets of the “administrators”, who have no gradate degrees or even experience in education. The “principal” taught for one year at a private religious school in another state. None of the other “administrators” have any education experience or degrees. The school serves hundreds of students. Who does it hurt? All involved!!
In the realm of higher education, there are private universities and public universities and colleges. That’s a different ball of wax. One type of institution is private and the other is public. The schools that we are referring to now are public schools paid for with tax dollars.
In terms of these Charter Management Organizations, CMO’, also termed Education Management Organizations, EMO’s, that would manage the charter schools, first that is another layer of cost that we cannot afford. Secondly, check out what happens when these for-profit companies take over our public schools, see Charter School Industry Running Amok in Florida with Taxpayer Dollars, http://blog.buzzflash.com/node/13215, and a study done by the National Education Policy Center, http://nepc.colorado.edu/files/EMO-profiles-10-11_0.pdf.
Dora
The reality here is that we have many ineffective public schools in this state. Since we have no means of closing them, or really reconstituting them, we are funding a dead horse in many cases.
Could some charter schools be more effective uses of taxpayer’s money than feeding these dead horses? What no one seems to deny is that parent investment in children has a very positive effect and yet there is a a great deal of reluctance to drag the disengaged parents to the table.
Charter schools address this and public schools refuse to do so.
Since charter schools are no in 40 states and the District of Columbia and as far as I know not one of these jurisdictions is clambering to rescind these laws I think we should go with the flow.
This state is 42nd in the nation in high school completion according to Education Week. Doesn’t that call for some changes?
First, I would like for you to define the term “ineffective schools”.
In terms of “funding”, our schools have not been adequately funded for many years now. We are also way down the list on funding. The state of Washington, in fact our representatives, have not met their “paramount duty” of ensuring that our schools receive the money necessary to pay for counselors,librarians, books, teaching staff, art classes, PE and additional materials and resources that are required to provide each student with the opportunity to succeed.
Some school buildings in our state are even unsafe seismically according to our own state building codes so before you start beating the drum for the privatization our public schools, let’s focus on ensuring that our schools are funded so that all of our students can succeed.
We also have two laws that passed in the last ten years that need to be activated before you can throw up your hands in despair and say that we should privatize our schools. First, there is the Innovative Schools legislation that passed last year that has not had an opportunity to develop. Also, there is a law that passed in 2000 regarding smaller class sizes. Unfortunately, again due to a lack of funding, our class sizes have increased and not decreased.
Let’s first ensure that our schools are funded before we allow for-profit companies to come in and drain us of even more tax dollars.
In terms of the fact that there are charter schools in many other states means that we should learn from their mistakes. In the right hand column of this page you will find many reasons why we should not go down that road. Not only has it been a tremendous waste of money for taxpayers, most charter schools are no better than public schools.
Dora
It isn’t money that is the root of our dismal achievement. It is the lack of concern by parents, seconded by educators who do not report the actual levels of achievement to placate parents.
New buildings do not change this, just witness Todd Beamer High School. If we are unwilling to change our priorities we cannot improve this.
There are school districts, not in this state, that have engaged parents, It would require a “culture change” here to develop academic and vocational excellence.
It isn’t money!