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By Ingrid Jacques
The Detroit News
April 3, 2015

John Rakolta Jr. recently accompanied a Detroit mother and her two children on their journey to school.

The CEO of Walbridge and a co-chair of the Coalition for the Future of Detroit Schoolchildren wanted to see for himself what challenges families face each day. It floored him.

This family’s day starts at 6:15 a.m. They walk seven blocks to the nearest bus stop and wait 30 minutes. After a 10 minute bus ride, they walk five blocks and wait another 30 minutes for the second bus. The mother then walks her children to their respective schools.

“I get to Florida faster than they are able to get to school, and that’s the truth,” Rakolta said Monday during the coalition’s presentation of its recommendations.

This daily commute takes about two hours, each way. Just hearing about it sounds exhausting. But it’s what this mother, and many parents like her, are willing to do to get their children to schools they trust.

This particular mother sends her kids to charter schools. More than half Detroit’s children now attend charters. Most charter schools can’t provide transportation, so it’s up to parents to find a way there.

The fact they go to such great lengths is a powerful testament to the value of these schools. Parents who are disappointed with Detroit Public Schools are making choices based on a variety of factors, from better academics to school culture and safety.

All those reasons have merit.

That’s why this coalition’s cautions about charter schools seem misplaced. In its report, the 36 members of the coalition highlight what they found to be an unbridled charter environment, with a dozen charter authorizers running schools in Detroit. Tonya Allen, CEO of the Skillman Foundation and a co-chair of the coalition, blamed the density of school choice for the academic struggles of Detroit students. The coalition concludes the number of players contributes to poor coordination of schools and “no accountability.”

On the accountability front, that’s simply not true. Most charter authorizers are doing a good job regulating themselves and the markets they serve. As Jared Burkhart, executive director of the Michigan Council of Charter School Authorizers, points out, in the past five years, there has only been a net increase of seven schools in Detroit.

The coalition also points to the need for more quality and transparency of charter schools. But the state charter council has already sought that on its own. Burkhart and his members are spearheading an accreditation effort that would make Michigan the first in the country to put its charter authorizers through rigorous scrutiny.

One of the state’s largest authorizers, Grand Valley State University, just completed the process through the Georgia-based AdvancED. And other authorizers are lining up to do the same.

The national group Center for Education Reform gives Michigan’s charter school law an “A” grade. And after the coalition’s report, the center warned of adding “additional layers of bureaucracy with regards to the opening, closing, and renewal of charter schools.”

And Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes studied the performance of charters in 41 urban areas, including Detroit, and found students are gaining more than two months additional learning in a year than are their traditional public school peers.

Charter schools are also playing a significant role in encouraging middle-class families to stay in Detroit.

The Best Classroom Project, a grassroots group, has brought more than 300 Detroit parents together on a mission to find good kindergarten programs in the city. Many of the schools that have stood out to these families are charter schools.

While there is certainly room for improving charter schools, they have done much to offer better school choices in Detroit — and they shouldn’t be hampered in that work.

Ingrid Jacques is deputy editorial page editor of The Detroit News.

By Rachel Mullen
Watchdog.org
March 30, 2015

Charter schools are an important part of the school choice movement. Unfortunately, as with any of these entities, some game the system.

These unethical and wasteful schools taint the entire education reform movement. Ohio is no exception to this. The Center for Education Reform recently gave Ohio’s Charter Schools a grade of “C.”

Dave Yost, the Auditor of State, has taken an aggressive stand towards cleaning up wasteful charter schools, making them more accountable to the taxpayers. The auditor has demanded repayment of nearly $300,000 from two charter schools.

Sunrise Academy, a chartered Islamic school in Hilliard will need to repay $198,746. Those funds were attributed to an instructor hired to teach non-English speaking students. However, this instruction was never provided to the students.

Wendy Marshall received $88,750 in tax dollars to open the Directional Academy in 2013. That school never opened after accepting the funds. Yost is demanding they be returned to the state.

House Bill 2 is a charter school reform bill now being considered by the Legislature. It is co-sponsored by Majority Whip Mike Dovilla and state Rep. Kristina Roegner. The bill was written to increase accountability, transparency and responsibility in Ohio’s charter schools. Yost testified before the House Education Committee earlier this month regarding this bill.

His testimony focuses on possible abuses and closing those loopholes. One of those issues is truancy. If a student is truant, the school should withdraw him. Funding is based upon a 105 hour clock, allowing a student to miss a month of school and the school would still be receiving payment from the state.

“If the student misses 104 hours, then shows up for a single day, the student gets a new 105-hour clock. The school is not required to withdraw the student and they continue to receive funding as if the student hadn’t missed a day of school. That means that it is possible for a student to show up for as few as 10 days of school and receive funding for an entire year.”

Yost also suggests placing liens on school buildings in the event that a charter school fails soon after opening its doors. Under the current system, if a school fails quickly, the school still ends up with a building paid for by the taxpayers.

 “Currently, because of short investment horizons, facilities are often funded by front- loaded leases that use a high proportion of revenue in early years to retire the debt over a short amortization. Then, if the school fails, the realty company, often controlled by the management company, owns the building.

It is worth recognizing the interest the state has in that building – but for the state funding, the building would not have been acquired. Education of our children ought not be a back-door means to acquire real estate. “

Student transfers are not currently tracked well. If a school cannot locate the student identification number, it creates a new one. Allowing the Ohio Department of Education to use the identity of the student would cause more accountability. Privacy is not a concern as the state already has this information.

“The State funds students based on attendance, and as my office’s work has amply demonstrated over the past several years, the “honor system” used in Ohio is open to abuse.

During interviews, we have discovered that schools will often generate a new SSID for a student when they have difficulty finding that student’s previously assigned SSID. In 2012-13, we discovered multiple SSIDs for the same student, which wreaks havoc on efforts to track student transfers between schools.

The simple solution is to follow the example of every other state in the Union, save one, and allow ODE to know the identity of the student behind those numbers. We are one of only two states that hamstring our Department of Education like this. It will increase the accuracy of our data, prevent funding errors and make sure that children don’t fall through the cracks. “

The school choice movement allows families the opportunity to determine which education is best suited for their children. But, like any school, charter schools need to be accountable to the taxpayers. Closing loopholes for abuse of state resources emboldens the movement as it increases confidence from the public.

By Rose Mary Grant
Providence Journal
March 29, 2015

As the debate about charter school funding continues at the Rhode Island State House, a narrow focus has been placed on the financial impact of charters on the traditional public schools.

It is clear that the review of the funding formula and the decisions made moving forward could significantly alter the landscape for charter schools. However, what has not been brought to the table at these hearings is the impact that undermining charter schools could have on the State of Rhode Island.

The CREDO (Center for Research on Educational Outcomes) Report, published by Stanford University in 2013, ranked states based on the growth performance of charter schools in reading and math as compared with students in traditional public schools.

The study used an approach in which a “virtual twin” was constructed for each charter student by drawing on the available records of traditional public school students with identical traits and identical or very similar prior test scores who were enrolled in traditional schools that the charter students would have likely attended if they were not in their charter school. Factors included in the matching criteria were: grade level; gender; race/ethnicity; free or reduced-price lunch eligibility; English language learner status; special education status; and prior test score on state achievement tests.

Rhode Island charter schools clearly led the pack in growth rates and impact on performance. The report equates growth rate with extra instructional days.

On page 63, the report explains reading growth and states: “Especially of interest are those states such as the District of Columbia (72 additional days learning) and Louisiana (50 additional days) that have above-average charter effects and below-average NAEP [National Assessment of Educational Progress] scores. Rhode Island has the strongest charter effect in reading at 86 additional days of learning.”

On page 64, a similar pattern is noted in math growth. “The average charter impact in math for students in the District of Columbia is equal to 101 additional days of instruction; in New York City, the amount is 94 additional days, and in Rhode Island, it is 108 additional days of learning.”

How ironic is it that the state with very weak laws in place to foster the growth and development of charter schools has charters that are leading the nation in outcomes?

The Center for Education Reform Report on Charter Laws this year gave the State of Rhode Island a grade of D for charter school laws. “Rhode Island has a very weak charter law across the board. Only the state can approve charter schools, there is a cap on the number of charters.”

Clearly, it is time for Rhode Islanders to understand that this is not an argument of charters versus traditional public schools. It is not about who wins and who loses. All of Rhode Island loses if we cut funding to the very schools that are nationally recognized as outperforming their counterparts across the country.

Rhode Island’s economy and workforce are dependent on high-quality education. Businesses will not move into a state if they know that their prospective employees will question the educational options for their children. Likewise, Rhode Island will not grow its own workforce by cutting funding to high-performing schools.

With statistics showing that minorities are struggling, schools with higher outcomes for Hispanic and black students are critical to building the Rhode Island economy. Rhode Island urban charters are the schools doing that heavy lifting and closing the gaps for minority students.

Changing the funding formula to harm charter schools would not only hurt those schools, but also hurt job development, employment, the housing market and business stimulation and growth in the state.

How shortsighted Rhode Island would be to ignore the national data available to us as we make critical decisions about the future of our state. How will national leaders and funders look upon a state that chooses to ignore the impartial evidence based on solid outcomes and decrease funding to the charter schools that are leading the nation in outcomes for our minority student population?

KFGO
March 28, 2015

ST.PAUL (MNN) – Minnesota was the first state in the nation to introduce charter schools, and a new review shows the state’s laws governing them are second-strongest in the nation.

Minnesota’s charter school laws get an “A” on the report from the Center for Education Reform, in part because charter schools are funded through the state, the same way public schools get much of their operating money.

Minnesota also gets high marks for the level of autonomy that charter schools have at the state and local levels, and because teachers have the freedom to participate in a union and are covered by the state’s retirement system. There are 158 charter schools in Minnesota.