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by Andrea Neal
Indianapolis Star
November 5, 2012

(Second of two columns on Gov. Mitch Daniels’ legacy)

Mitch Daniels used his first term to get Indiana’s fiscal house in order. His second term sealed his reputation as the education reform governor.

“Truly historic changes” came to Indiana schools, the American Legislative Exchange Council said in its 2012 Report Card on American Education.

“Indiana moved up into the A’s for the first time after the reform-minded governor and legislature greatly improved the state charter law in 2011,” said the Center for Education Reform Report.

The Weekly Standard, a national journal of conservative thought, credited Daniels for “taking Indiana from the backwaters of education reform in America to the forefront.”

It’s a bit early to claim success. It will be several years before Hoosiers know if reforms instituted by Daniels will boost test scores. ISTEP passage rates are creeping up and graduation rates are higher, but there’s yet to be noticeable improvement on the National Assessment of Education Progress or the SAT.

Daniels took office in 2005, but his first term was consumed with budget balancing and recession, which delayed his educational initiatives until the middle of term two. Once he and School Superintendent Tony Bennett turned their sights on schools, change was fast and furious:

Collective bargaining with teachers unions was limited to wages and benefits, which means schools can pursue their own reform ideas, such as longer school days.

Teacher pay raises are now based on many factors, including student test scores, as well as the previous criteria of seniority and education. Teachers rated as ineffective can’t receive a pay increase.

The State Board of Education uses letter grades — A to F — to judge school quality instead of vague labels like commendable and academic progress. The new system take into account test scores, score improvement, graduation rates and

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I was recently asked by a famous Ed Blogger, Alexander Russo, what I thought of the “audit” by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), over how charter school funds are monitored.
The experience of reviewing this report was a reminder of the disconnect between a new way of doing public schooling and the old fashioned way. Here was my response:

Once again we have a federal agency with a 20th century mentality on schooling attempting to audit an industry it neither understands nor can fully appreciate. The purpose of the federal charter grant program was to spawn the creation of new schools and sustain existing ones through state and local entities to which these schools are accountable for results – outcomes — not process and paperwork. The fact that a reviewer felt uncomfortable or untrained or that the federal lens didn’t see allegiance to the kind of old, worn out paperwork requirements that still plague traditional districts should underscore the problem with compelling reviews like this that chase process over achievement. (By the way, those districts do compliance with financial and operational requirements really well but it has no bearing on real educational accountability!)

Arizona lacked a monitoring checklist to make comparisons between schools? How would a check list result in their being able to compare schools? The federal auditors should have FIRST been in touch with the authorizers who are monitoring accountability and second, or failing that, they could have been simply asking for the kinds of data and financial records that every non-profit should produce– namely, identifying the flow of money through budgets, audits, 990s, P&Ls etc…

Oh, but that might require to actually know something about finance and budgeting.

It might be a cool exercise to see what this supposed checklist that is at the heart

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by Sean Cavanagh
Education Week
October 15, 2012

For the past few years, states have been busy writing and revising their laws on charter schools—in most cases, with an eye toward expansion. Today, a pro-charter advocacy group released a guide meant to give states some direction in this regard.

The Center for Education Reform’s model charter school legislation reflects the organization’s view of the features of a strong charter laws, some of which are bound to prompt disagreement.

Read the rest of the article here.

Statement by Jeanne Allen, President, The Center for Education Reform

CER Press Release
Washington, D.C.
October 15, 2012

“Amendments to Pennsylvania’s charter school law, negotiated in recent days and awaiting legislative approval, would be a serious setback for charter school educators, leaders and parents.

“SB 1115, a bill originally designed to improve and expand quality charter schools, now gives the Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE), new, expanded powers over charter school finances and outcomes. Such a role for a state education department is unprecedented in states with strong charter laws. Pennsylvania charter schools are already held to the same standards as all other public schools yet they are accountable to their authorizers for meeting legal and financial requirements and performance milestones. When authorizers fail, it is time to reform the authorizing process, not give the PDE, which is already burdened by its current oversight duties, more regulatory power over schools that should be managed by better authorizers. Pennsylvania’s charter school law isn’t lacking in public accountability; it is lacking in the existence of strong authorizers.

“Yet authorizers in Pennsylvania — school districts — are often no better at managing charter schools than they are at managing traditional public schools. The issue facing lawmakers who are seeking to improve chartering is not to demand more state education agency oversight, but to create multiple authorizers. Multiple and independent authorizers which are the key to highly successful charter schools in 15 states have little oversight from their states’ education departments and give charter school parents and educators freedom from traditional bureaucracy to achieve performance successes that hamper success in too many traditional public schools. History and research have proven that strong authorizers serve the public good by fostering the creation of great public charter schools that serve children in need of options. Such charters are held

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An essential guide to charter school lawmaking grounded on experience and practice.

Press Release
Download or print your PDF copy of The Essential Guide to Charter School Lawmaking: Model Legislation for States Grounded in Experience and Practice

by Barbara Jones
Los Angeles Daily News
October 10, 2012

Her empire stretches from the aging Vaughn Elementary School at one end to the state-of-the-art Global and Green Generation campus at the other.

In between lies a primary center, a middle school, a campus for senior high students and a half-dozen lots where Yvonne Chan dreams of building high-tech learning academies.

It’s been nearly 20 years since Chan transformed LAUSD’s failing Vaughn Elementary into the nation’s first independent conversion charter, a move she parlayed into a thriving network of charter campuses serving 2,400 students in preschool through 12th grade.

Chan envisions her schools, known collectively as the Vaughn Next Century Learning Center, as a hub for the Pacoima community and the anchors of an education and economic corridor stretching along six blocks of Herrick Avenue. It’s a dream she is pursuing with the same single-minded determination that has won her acclaim and brought her students academic success.
“Never allow `no’ to get in the way,” she said during a recent tour of the campuses.

Chan’s newest enterprise is the so-called 3G campus, an architectural wonder that opened this fall and serves 500 second- and third-graders.

Small clusters of students are taught in sprawling classrooms without walls – “These have `me space’ and `we space,” Chan said – with arts and technology integrated into the curriculum. The lessons are taught by teams of teachers and are infused with elements from countries and cultures from around the world.

Off the front lobby is a well-equipped auditorium/theater and space where a library and a coffee shop will soon be

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“Futuristic Rocketship schools redefine teaching”
by Greg Toppo
USA Today
October 14, 2012

So far the results are promising: Rocketship students score among the top performers on standardized tests.

Luis Zepeda is relentless.

The fourth-grader, his dark hair cropped close, has been staring at a computer screen for close to 20 minutes, trying again and again to solve a devilish little puzzle built around rectangles’ axes of symmetry.

Two friends appear, offering unsolicited advice and urging him to try their solutions. Nothing works, and their teacher, who could offer help, is nowhere in sight.

“This one’s hard,” classmate Brian Aguilera says. Zepeda keeps trying. Finally, after 15 minutes’ more work, he cracks the puzzle. His reward: another, harder puzzle.

Another morning in Learning Lab at Rocketship Si Se Puede Academy, a 3-year-old charter school built on a sliver of city-owned land in the shadow of the I-680 off-ramp. Si Se Puede — Spanish for “Yes It’s Possible” or “Yes We Can” — is part of a tiny chain of schools set to expand nationwide.

While it shares a lot in common with many privately run, but publicly funded, charter schools, Rocketship defies nearly all the conventional wisdom about how an urban elementary school should operate. For one thing, students spend as much as two hours a day one-on-one with a computer, learning virtually all of their basic skills through games.

Most Rocketship teachers are young and inexperienced, and the vast majority attended Ivy League or other top colleges. Rocketship recruits heavily from Teach For America — a high-profile program that matches college graduates with high-needs schools — and pushes teachers to become principals after just a few years in the classroom.

But perhaps the most striking difference is what’s about to happen: The chain is small, with only seven schools, but by the end of the decade, its founders want

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Throughout the media, a statistic is often repeated that suggests charter school achievement is “mixed” and that only 1 in 5 charter schools actually perform well. This started in June 2009, when The New York Times published a report on a study by a small research center out at Stanford University, whose press releases for each of the 15 states studied said that charter schools usually did no better or worse than traditional public schools. It’s been repeated by everyone from Joe Scarborough to Education Secretary Arne Duncan. The problem is that it’s not even remotely true.

Here are some resources that indicate charter schools are succeeding:
—Fact-Checking Charter School Achievement:
Fact-Checking Charter School Achievement documents the true achievement of charter schools, a reform celebrated daily in more than 5,000 schools in 40 states around the country.

— How NYC Charter Schools Affect Achievement
This report shows that NYC charter school students will learn more over time than those students who remain in conventional public schools.

—DC Charter Scores Prove Success
Results from an accountability system fashioned by the DC Public Charter School Board show superior gains in charters versus traditional public schools. The system also notes schools that, according to the data, either need to buck up or be closed, which is something that this independent authorizer is willing to do.

—Democracy Prep Wins Big:
The U.S. Department of Education awarded Democracy Prep Charter School a $9.1M dollar expansion grant to open and turnaround 15 new schools across Harlem, NY, Camden, NJ, and other high-need communities. The most recent NY progress reports affirm Democracy Prep’s place as the highest performing charter management organization in NYC over the past 5 years.

You can find more on school choice and charter school success on the Choice & Charter School

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“Charter school moratorium could be lifted”
by Garry Rayno
Union Leader
September 25, 2012

The charter school moratorium could be lifted as soon as November if legislative budget writers approve an additional $5 million next month.

State Board of Education Chair Tom Raffio told key lawmakers that the board would consider applications again if there was some assurance additional state money would be forthcoming.

“If there is some demonstration the money will be there, we could move forward with the applications,” Raffio told members of the House finance and education committees Tuesday.

Several lawmakers chastised the state school board for its action, saying it put a damper on enthusiasm for charter schools.

“This is a flat moratorium. It’s very disappointing the way this was handled,” said education committee member Rep. Rick Ladd, R-Haverhill. “Someone let the ball drop and that is too bad for the children.”

Raffio said communications could have been handled better, but there was no intent to hurt the children.

In fact, he said, the decision was made to protect children and their parents from charter schools opening and then having to close because the state did not provide adequate funding.

Charter schools receive $5,450 in state aid for each pupil and most depend on that money for financial viability.

The board voted last week to institute the moratorium after members learned there would be a $5 million shortfall in state aid for charter schools this fiscal year. With additional charter schools approved and ready to open beginning next September, the board decided to deny any new applications until additional state money is available.

The action upset plans for several charter schools waiting for final approval and expecting to open next fall. It also upset lawmakers who believed they provided a process to increase charter school funding in the event of a shortfall.

Budget writers included a provision that

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A Stanford University report from the Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) gained major attention in June 2009 when the New York Times ran its findings that public charter schools do no better or worse than traditional public schools. Unfortunately, these findings continue to be taken as fact today despite the study’s shortcomings. Below are some brief talking points on why the CREDO report is flawed.
You can find more detailed information in “Fact-Checking Charter School Achievement.”
 

Uncorrelated Variables

CREDO’s analysis does not account for the great variances in charter laws from state to state or how those laws may differ from paper to practice.

• While the report suggests correlations exist between student achievement and charter law components, they admit to not fully understanding the impact of specific laws.
• The report suggests a negative correlation between student achievement and multiple authorizers. In fact, such charter authorizers vary greatly in law and practice, as CER’s 2012 study and scorecard demonstrate. There is clear evidence that charter students succeed in states witha number of meaningful, independent and highly accountable authorizers who compete for chartering. See our Multiple Authorizers Primer for more information on charter authorizers.
• The study was based on student population and not the overal strength of their charter system. Therefore CREDO missed most opportunities to see really strong charters in action.

Virtual Methodology

While there are virtual schools, there is no such thing as “virtual” student achievement.

• The CREDO report acknowledges the creation of new research tools to assess the unknowable. Instead of comparing real students who attend charter schools to real students who attend conventional public schools, CREDO merged demographic data to create “virtual twins.” Randomization, the gold standard of research, is not used.
• By virtually replicating the demographic profile of a

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