Shapiro Consulting, Author at The Center for Education Reform

North Carolina Paves Path to Expand Choice

June 30, 2016 By Shapiro Consulting

Details about North Carolina’s proposed budget that would vastly expand choices for children:

North Carolina legislature proposes budget strong
on K-12 education
Expands Opportunity Scholarship Program, Increases Teacher Pay, Increases Funding for Special Needs School Choice Program

from The American Federation for Children
June 28, 2016

The American Federation for Children, the nation’s voice for educational choice, today applauds the North Carolina House and Senate for their proposed budget strengthening K-12 education and expanding educational opportunity in the state. The budget would significantly increase funding for the North Carolina Opportunity Scholarship Program to give scholarships to nearly 36,000 low-income students over the next 10 years. It also would increase overall K-12 spending by $500 million, including for teacher salaries and the Children with Disabilities Scholarship Grant.

“North Carolina is committed to providing all children with a quality education, and we are pleased with their decision to increase funding for those students and families who are most in need of educational choice well into the future,” said Betsy DeVos, chairman of the American Federation for Children. “We join our allies at Parents for Educational Freedom in North Carolina (PEFNC) in thanking Senator Phil Berger, House Speaker Tim Moore and legislative leadership for giving low-income and special needs families greater access to school choice.”

The North Carolina Opportunity Scholarship Program currently serves over 3,600 children from low-income families. The proposed expansion of program funding would help to meet the widespread demand for scholarships. Funding would increase from $44 million for the 2017-18 school year to almost $145 million for the 2027-28 school year – allowing over 36,000 students to receive a scholarship through the program.

“Today, with more than 22,300 applications submitted for the Opportunity Scholarship Program since its inception in 2013, this proposed budget is an acknowledgement to the thousands of working class families who never gave up on this program in hopes of it being a real game-changer for their children…With hopeful passage of this budget and signature by our governor, North Carolina will palpably demonstrate that this state will no longer allow income and geography to remain barriers to ensuring that all children – especially those who happen to be low-income or disabled – have the opportunity to the best education our state has to offer,” said Darrell Allison, president of Parents for Educational Freedom in North Carolina (PEFNC).

The proposed budget will now go to the House and Senate floor for votes and then to the Governor’s desk.

Historic Expansion of Teacher Pay and Opportunity Scholarships for Low-Income Families in Proposed State Budget Plan

from Parents for Educational Freedom in North Carolina
June 28, 2016

Parents for Educational Freedom in North Carolina (PEFNC) applauds the North Carolina House and Senate for their proposed budget which has a strong, comprehensive focus on K-12 public education. This budget increased K-12 spending by over $500 million and dramatically boosted teacher salaries. The budget also includes a massive funding expansion of the North Carolina Opportunity Scholarship Program that provides private school scholarships worth up to $4,200 to low-income and working class families.

“I, along with thousands of North Carolina families, thank Senator Phil Berger and House Speaker Tim Moore and leadership in both bodies for rightly compensating our valued teachers of North Carolina and for the generous budget designed for the Opportunity Scholarship Program. The compromise budget, in an effort to meet future parental demand for the Program, increases funding from $44,840,000 in 2017-18 (over 10,000 students) to nearly $145 million in 2027-28, or nearly 36,000 students,” said Darrell Allison, president of Parents for Educational Freedom in North Carolina.

“It’s hard to believe that this program was figuratively on life-support just three short years ago plagued with multiple court challenges and legal stoppages and injunctions. Today, with more than 22,300 applications submitted for the Opportunity Scholarship Program since its inception in 2013, this proposed budget is an acknowledgement to the thousands of working class families who never gave up on this program in hopes of it being a real game-changer for their children. Likewise, I salute our state leaders for answering the call. With hopeful passage of this budget and signature by our governor, North Carolina will palpably demonstrate that this state will no longer allow income and geography to remain barriers to ensuring that all children – especially those who happen to be low-income or disabled – have the opportunity to the best education our state has to offer,” said Allison.

The budget now heads to both the House and Senate for floor votes and onto the governor’s desk for approval.

Additional education initiatives PEFNC would like to thank the legislature for including in its budget are:

Children with Disabilities Scholarship Grant: The budget increases the amount by $5.8 million to over $10 million to provide additional scholarships for children with disabilities for the several hundred families who were currently on the waiting list. This will help families offset the costs of approved educational expenses for their special needs child, which could include private school tuition, tutoring, and other therapeutic services.
Teacher Pay Increase: Average teacher salaries will rise about 4.7 percent raising the average teacher salary in North Carolina to more than $50,000 this year and above $54,000 over the next three years.
Teacher 3^rd Grade Reading Bonus: Program for third-grade teachers whose students surpass on state-required reading tests. A third-grade teacher can earn up to a $6,500 bonus under this budget proposal whose students excelling at state and district level.

Filed Under: Breaking News

Hillary Is Right on Innovation!, Say Education Reformers

June 29, 2016 By Shapiro Consulting

The best way to improve the U.S. education system is through innovation and opportunity.

WASHINGTON, DC (June 29, 2016) — The Center for Education Reform (CER) today released the following statement from Jeanne Allen, founder and chief executive, applauding Hillary Clinton’s “innovation agenda” for higher education:

“Hillary’s innovation-focused agenda is exactly what higher education needs. Her emphasis on how different forms of learning can empower young people and provide greater opportunity embraces a notion that reformers have long advocated: that one model doesn’t fit all students.

“Indeed, once upon a time, Hillary supported substantive changes to the status quo. In 1996, she wrote in her book, It Takes a Village, that she found the charter school ‘argument persuasive.’ Presumably, the First Lady would have favored the pro-charter policies her husband put forward, including legislation that he said would put America ‘well on [its] way to creating 3,000 charter schools by the year 2000.’

“And yet, in 2015, Secretary Clinton seemed to take an opposite point of view, repeating an oft-used but inaccurate portrayal of charters: ‘Most charter schools — I don’t want to say every one — but most charter schools, they don’t take the hardest-to-teach kids, or, if they do, they don’t keep them,’ she said.

“The innovations in higher education Hillary is calling for today actually originated in charter schools and have taken hold at all levels of schooling. We call on her to embrace once again the needed, widespread changes to the status quo and to be a leader in ensuring that the principles of innovation and opportunity are embedded throughout all levels of education.”

For more information about how innovation can transform education, see CER’s recently released manifesto, Here Is Everything That’s Wrong With the U.S. Education System — And How to Fix It.

The Center for Education Reform does not endorse candidates, but we will always recognize when someone’s on the right side of parent power and excellence for kids.

Filed Under: Press Releases

A Terrible Day for Teachers’ Rights

June 29, 2016 By Shapiro Consulting

Statement from CER Founder & CEO on Supreme Court Denial of Petition to Rehear Friedrichs Case

WASHINGTON, DC (June 29, 2016) — The following statement was issued today by Jeanne Allen, founder and CEO of the Center for Education Reform, on the Supreme Court’s denial of a petition to rehear the Friedrichs v. California Teacher’s Association et al. case:

“It’s disappointing that freedom for teachers and their rights will have to wait another day. As we celebrate twenty-five years of charter schools and the innovation they brought to education — which were largely initiated by teachers seeking more autonomy to provide diverse learning opportunities for children — it’s unfathomable that we can still deny teachers the right to make their own decisions about how and under what conditions they should work.

We cannot succeed as a nation in educating our children if we cannot ensure teachers are involved in decisions about where and how they teach. We are thankful to Rebecca Friedrichs and her colleagues for bravely raising this issue, and all who worked to fight for teacher freedom. The fight for teachers’ rights must continue.”

Filed Under: Press Releases

Hillary Embraces Innovation-Focused Agenda For Higher Education

June 29, 2016 By Shapiro Consulting

The best way to improve the U.S. education system is through innovation and opportunity.

Press Release
June 29, 2016

WASHINGTON, DC — The Center for Education Reform (CER) today released the following statement from Jeanne Allen, founder and chief executive, applauding Hillary Clinton’s “innovation agenda” for higher education:

For more information about how innovation can transform education, see CER’s recently released manifesto, Here Is Everything That’s Wrong With the U.S. Education System — And How to Fix It.

The Center for Education Reform does not endorse candidates, but we will always recognize when someone’s on the right side of parent power and excellence for kids.

Filed Under: News & Views

NEWSWIRE: June 28, 2016 — What’s next for Charter Schools?

June 28, 2016 By Shapiro Consulting

We’re on the ground in Nashville, TN this week at the National Charter Schools Conference, and from panel discussions to side conversations the message for a New Opportunity Agenda is clear: Charter schools must get back to their roots of being innovative learning opportunities for children.

QUOTABLE. A few of the best remarks overheard so far at #NCSC16:

If we have the courage to bring down Jim Crow laws then we should have the same courage to change education. The problem I have with the edreform movement is that we’re too soft. We will fight until hell freezes over, and then we will fight on the ice. — Roland Martin

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We must not only remember where we have been, but UNDERSTAND where we’ve been. We have to understand and remember the bigger idea of why charter schools exist and were created in the first place. — Howard Fuller

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Charter schools are kind of like Snoop Dogg. Nobody ever thought he’d be mainstream. Now charter schools are mainstream. But we have to go back to selling mix tapes out of the back of a car. — Howard Fuller

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THE FIRST LAW. As we celebrate the nation’s first charter school law created in Minnesota 25 years ago, Joe Nathan with the Center for School Change reminds us of the simple yet compelling five-page law that allowed for opportunities for charter schools to flourish.

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CHARTERS AS INNOVATION. Ted Kolderie, author of “The Split Screen Strategy: Improvement + Innovation” and one of the founding fathers of edreform, reminded us that charter schools were founded with the intention of being something totally different from traditional district schools. Charters were to have freedom in exchange for accountability, in order to get to the end goal of radically improving children’s lives. But now, charter schools are dangerously close to becoming the very thing they sought to change. “Regulation is at odds with radical change,” reflected Kolderie. And that’s precisely why many gathered yesterday to discuss how to get back on track an edreform movement that’s lost steam, so that all of our nation’s children can access excellent education opportunities.

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Filed Under: Newswire Weekly, Newswire

New Data Shows 98% of 2016 Boston Charter High School Graduates Have Been Accepted to College

June 23, 2016 By Shapiro Consulting

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
June 22, 2016

CONTACT:
Eileen O’Connor
eileen@keyserpublicstrategies.com
617-806-6999

BOSTON, MA – New data from Boston’s six public charter high schools shows that 98.5% of 2016 graduates were accepted into college; 89% were accepted to a four-year university. Each of the six public charter high schools in Boston sent more than 90% of their 2016 graduates to college.

An analysis of the most recent postsecondary data reveals that hard fought academic gains by Boston charter school graduates continue to be leveraged after high school. More than 46% of the 2009 charter graduating class had earned a postsecondary degree by spring 2016 in comparison to 19.8% of 2009 graduates from non-exam, open enrollment high schools in the Boston Public Schools (BPS). Even when you include graduates from BPS elite exam schools, which have rigorous entrance requirements, the percentage of BPS graduates who earned a college degree by spring 2016 stood at 30%.

At a time when a college education is more important than ever, Boston’s public charter schools – which serve a student body that is 89% Black and Latino – have a proven track record of preparing students for success and closing the achievement gap. According to Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO), public charter school students in Boston are learning at double the rate of Boston district school students, making two years worth of academic progress in English and math for every year they’re enrolled in a public charter school.

According to new data from the six public charter high schools in Boston:

MATCH High School, Codman Academy High School, the Academy of the Pacific Rim, and Boston Preparatory High School each had 100% of 2016 graduates accepted to college.
98% of Boston Collegiate Charter School graduates were accepted to college.
93% of City on a Hill graduates were accepted to college.
The colleges and universities that students were accepted to are among the nation’s best, including: Babson College, Bates College, Bentley University, Boston College, Brandeis University, Bridgewater State University, Brown University, Bucknell University, Colby-Sawyer College, College of the Holy Cross, Curry College, Dartmouth College, Davidson College, Emmanuel College, Loyola University Maryland, Merrimack College, Newbury College, Northeastern University, Providence College, Quinnipiac University, Simmons College, Smith College, The George Washington University, University of Connecticut, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Boston, Dartmouth, and Lowell, University of New Hampshire at Durham, Vassar College, Wesleyan University, Wheaton College, and Wheelock College.

“We applaud the students, faculty, and staff of Boston’s public charter high schools for their tremendous achievement,” said Eileen O’Connor, a spokesperson for Great Schools Massachusetts. “This latest data highlights the need to expand access to public charter schools so that more children can have access to the longer school day and intensive personal attention that public charter schools provide. As this new data shows, public charter schools are closing the achievement gap and helping more Boston children gain access to college.”

“This latest data shows what’s possible for Boston students when they’re given a high quality education,” said Thabiti Brown, Head of School at Codman Academy in Dorchester. “Expanding access to public charter schools will give more children the opportunity to attend public high schools that prepare them for success in college and beyond.”

Great Schools Massachusetts is a statewide coalition of parents, community groups, public charter schools, business leaders and education advocates committed to providing families with equal access to public charter schools. More than 34,000 children in Massachusetts remain stuck on public charter school waiting lists due to arbitrary enrollment caps, including more than 13,000 children in Boston alone. New charters are also frozen in Lawrence, Holyoke, Fall River, and other urban districts where traditional public schools are underperforming and parents have shown a clear demand for public charter schools. Great Schools Massachusetts is committed to providing families with equal access to public charter schools.

Filed Under: Breaking News

The Great Hope – and Great Fear – of School Reform in New Orleans

June 22, 2016 By Shapiro Consulting

by Evan Smith
Opportunity Lives
June 21, 2016

Out of tragedy, an opportunity emerged.

For decades the city of New Orleans was failing its children. The statistics make plain the reality of the situation: About 62 percent of students were enrolled in failing schools. And more than half of all students didn’t even graduate from high school.

Then came Hurricane Katrina, which destroyed lives and washed away much of the city’s education infrastructure, leaving in its wake widespread destruction of property and a historic exodus of city residents.

In that void, a small group of educators came together to rebuild.

“Sometimes it takes a tragedy to help remind us what’s important — and not to take it for granted,” notes a recent manifesto from the Center for Education Reform. “Nowhere is this more obvious for the education reform movement than looking at New Orleans.”

In many ways — unpleasant as it sounds — the storm’s aftermath offered the perfect ecosystem in which to try something new, something better, for the sake of empowering the city’s historically overlooked children.

So in a partnership with the state of Louisiana, education reformers and local community leaders ushered in a movement of autonomous charter schools to fill the void, and the results speak for themselves.

“Since Katrina, [New Orleans] schools have produced what some experts believe to be the most rapid academic improvement in American history — and created a reform model other cities are trying,” wrote David Osborne, a senior fellow and director at the Progressive Policy Institute.

Today, more than 92 percent of kids in the Big Easy attend charter schools. Of those students, three-quarters are graduating high school on time, while the percentage of students testing at grade level has gone up by 77 percent, according to the Center for Education Reform.

Simply put, the New Orleans transformation is the “most radical overhaul of any type in any school district in at least a century,” according to Tulane University economist Douglas Harris.

What’s even more striking about the New Orleans story is that this rebirth brought on by charters had not only improved student achievement — it would appear to be replacing the old system altogether.

“For education reformers — the people who dreamed of remaking not only schools, but re-imagining school districts and entire education systems — New Orleans reminds us what is possible,” notes the CER manifesto. “Parents, regardless of their means and their zip code, are finally getting to choose what’s best for their children.”

At least that’s the way it looked for awhile.

But as the Center of Education Reform’s Jeanne Allen humbly admitted to Opportunity Lives, “If we as a movement are to be honest with ourselves, we must knowledge that our efforts to drive change have hit a wall.”

“More was accomplished in the first nine years of the education reform movement than in the past 16,” Allen added.

That stunted progress is true for New Orleans as well.

“Perhaps the most troubling sign of reform’s place in the decade is the sudden unraveling of the New Orleans revolution,” the manifesto notes.

While reformers had hoped the clear statistical evidence of New Orleans rebirth was proof enough to justify a replication of its system in other cities, what they have come to see as reality is a pattern of assault from all sides by opponents of such change.

And nowhere is frustration over this situation more blatant than on the editorial page of the New Orleans Times-Picayune.

“Twenty years after Louisiana’s first charter school opened, you’d think the state’s educational establishment would’ve accepted the independent and innovation charters represent,” the Times-Picayune editorialized recently. “But judging by the slew of legislation filed this year to curb the growth of charters, that isn’t the case.”

With bills being introduced in Louisiana to limit the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education’s power to grant charters, bills that will take funding away from charters and bills that forbid charter boards from contracting with for-profit operators, it is a clear attack on the very idea of charters as a whole.

And it would appear that the entire justification for this assault is not based on the desired improvement of students, or providing parents with access to good schools, but simply because Gov. John Bel Edwards believes school districts should get the final say on charters.

To that notion — as well as the idea that charters are not clearly a better path, and that school choice isn’t a fundamental right, and that student success isn’t dependent on school choice — the editorial board of the Times-Picayune has one simple response:

“We disagree.”

When it comes to creating opportunity for Louisiana students, the past decade of charter implementation has given more children hope than ever before, the editorial board wrote. And lawmakers should never get in the way of dreams.

Filed Under: CER in the News

Newswire: June 21, 2016 — Sounding the Alarm for Innovation & Opportunity — Virtual Charter Schools Report Hurts Opportunity — MA Charter Cap Lift Likely Decided by Ballot

June 21, 2016 By Shapiro Consulting

SOUNDING THE ALARM FOR INNOVATION & OPPORTUNITY. Hundreds convened last week in Washington, DC to disrupt education and promote CER’s New Opportunity Agenda. “I left the lunch meeting feeling inspired and energized; filled with new ideas to try, groups with which to collaborate and ways to engage the students and their families who desire the option to select the type of school that is the best fit for their educational needs,” wrote Connections Education President Dr. Steven Guttentag.

Add your name to the growing chorus of people who commit to a new opportunity agenda!

MISS THE EVENT? The full video from The National Press Club is now available at staging.edreform.com, along with a two-minute highlight reel and shorter video clips of not-to-be-missed moments. Stay tuned on social media for more short clips to be released — and added to this page — throughout the week!

VIRTUAL CHARTER SCHOOL RESEARCH. While we appreciate the goal and desire to learn more about how online charter schools are impacting student outcomes, a report released last week lacks the depth and integrity needed in educational analysis, and ignores the fact that the voluntary choices of parents – when they have them – may not represent others’ conceptions of what works best for their kids. The report’s conclusions endanger the ideals of opportunity and innovation that are so desperately needed in education today.

WAITING FOR NOVEMBER. Despite the fact that more than 30,000 students are on charter school wait lists, charter school legislation has come to a “dead stop,” Massachusetts Senate President told the Associated Press. In April, the MA Senate passed a bill that masqueraded as a charter cap lift, but in reality would have done nothing to expand educational opportunities. The battle is not over yet though — 50 percent of likely voters in MA support a November ballot question to lift the cap on charter schools.

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GOOD TEACHERS ARE MADE, NOT BORN. Forget smart uniforms and small classes. The secret to stellar grades and thriving students is teachers. An important article from The Economist.

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Filed Under: Newswire Weekly, Newswire

Charter school reform must include accountability of school districts

June 21, 2016 By Shapiro Consulting

by Bob Fayfich
Allentown Morning Call
June 20, 2016

Auditor General Eugene DePasquale‘s Your View (“Fixing Pa.’s worst-in-nation charter school law is overdue”) essentially repeats the recommendations of his May 2014 report, and although we also believe that the charter school law should be updated, we have the same concerns with the auditor general’s recommendations now as we did then — with one addition.

Our historical concerns have been that the recommendations defend due process for school districts but deny it for charters; assume that all districts always act in good faith; dismiss the district role in creating inefficiencies and unnecessary costs; and ignore the impact of the recommendations on parents, children and the Pennsylvania Constitution.

Contrary to Mr. DePasquale’s assumption, many districts do not want charter schools to exist, regardless of how well they are educating children, and they do everything legally within their power, and sometimes illegally, to see that they don’t. The appeals process is the only protection the charter schools and the children in those schools have from inappropriate or illegal actions by the districts.

The report is silent to the fact that more than 200 districts refuse to pass through money to the charters in violation of the law, and the fact that the situations described as inefficient in Philadelphia were caused by actions of the district that were subsequently determined by the state Supreme Court to be in violation of the Pennsylvania Constitution.

Perhaps the greatest recommendation to increase efficient spending of taxpayer dollars is for districts to act within the law, but that recommendation is not included among those of the auditor general.

The new concern is that the auditor general is now identifying the Pennsylvania charter school law as the “worst in the nation,” when there is no factual basis for that statement.

Two independent national organizations, the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools and the Center for Education Reform, do independent annual comparisons of charter school laws in every state and neither has ever ranked Pennsylvania’s law as the worst in the nation.

This willingness to deviate from fact to hyperbole, coming from the office that is charged with basing its conclusions and recommendations on rational investigation and analysis, is disconcerting.

There is no disagreement with the fact the charter school law in Pennsylvania is out of date, but what is needed is a comprehensive and holistic approach, such as in House Bill 530, rather than a limited review that chooses to cherry-pick the need for more stringent charter school accountability and oversight while ignoring district accountability and illegal actions.

Bob Fayfich is executive director of the Pennsylvania Coalition of Public Charter Schools.

Filed Under: Opinions, CER in the News

Editor’s Note: Education still at risk, 40 years later

June 21, 2016 By Shapiro Consulting

by Ingrid Jacques
Detroit News
June 20, 2016

Nearly 40 years ago, President Ronald Reagan commissioned a comprehensive report on education. “A Nation at Risk,” which came out in 1983, warned of the increasing failure of the U.S. public school system.

Despite the call to action in that report and consequent reforms that were enacted around the country, student performance has remained stubbornly flat — even with a tripling of inflation-adjusted federal education funding since 1970.

The trend of poor performance is certainly true in Michigan, as the state continues to fall in its student achievement rankings.

A group of education, business and political leaders met last week at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., to discuss the state of schools and make a “clarion call” to rally the school choice community.

The Center for Education Reform, led by CEO Jeanne Allen, has issued a report on the need for more school innovation, including doubling down on school choice initiatives. Allen brought together a panel of education experts to discuss the report, including former Michigan Gov. John Engler.

Engler, now president of the Business Roundtable, ushered in Michigan’s charter school law in the 1990s. He continues to advocate school choice in his current role. Earlier this month, Engler urged the Legislature to leave out a Detroit Education Commission tied to a bailout of Detroit Public Schools; he believed it would unfairly limit charter schools in the city.

“There’s no excuse for the current state of America’s educational system,” Engler told the group last week. “We run the risk of falling even further behind if we don’t incorporate innovation and opportunity as bedrock principles.”

Filed Under: CER in the News, Breaking News

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