Tag:

charter schools

IDEA charter schools shine in national rankings

Lisa Buie May 4, 2020

IDEA Brownsville in Brownsville, Texas, opened in 2012 and is one of 96 IDEA schools in Texas and Louisiana serving nearly 53,000 students. IDEA will open schools in Tampa and Jacksonville in the next two years.

A not-for-profit Texas-based charter school company that plans to expand to Florida has received national recognition for 15 of its high schools.

IDEA Public Schools, which is scheduled to open four schools in Hillsborough County next year and four in Jacksonville in 2022, announced that 15 of its college preparatory schools were ranked among the top 1 percent of the most challenging high schools in the nation by the Jay Matthews Challenge Index high school rankings. The index ranks public and private high schools by their ratio of Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate or Cambridge tests given in a school year, divided by the number of seniors who graduated that year. (The list is intended to rank schools that serve average students; those that serve elite students are ranked separately.)

The index included 11 IDEA schools among the top 25 of all high schools nationwide. Additionally, IDEA schools ranked in the top 25 percent of charter schools nationwide, with eight schools ranked among the top 10 in Texas. IDEA schools also ranked in the top 25 among Texas charter schools; IDEA College Preparatory McAllen was named the top high school in Texas and was ranked third in the nation.

The charter school company, which primarily serves students from low-income families, also was recognized by U.S. News & World Report’s 2020 Best High Schools. Two of its schools were among the top 25 percent of charter schools nationally and nine were among the top 10 percent of high schools in Texas overall. The U.S. News rankings are based on college readiness, reading and math proficiency, reading and math performance, underserved student performance, college curriculum breadth and graduation rates.

“IDEA believes deeply that every child can and will succeed if given the opportunity, and we provide our students with an enriching, nurturing and high-expectations educational experience,” said Adam Miller, vice president of advancement for the nonprofit company, which operates 96 schools in Texas and Louisiana. “We know that if we challenge our students with rigorous content delivered by exceptional teachers, our students will succeed.”

IDEA schools require each student to take at least 11 Advanced Placement courses, a contributing factor, Miller says, in the schools’ 100 percent college admission rate. Miller said the requirement also has helped boost IDEA graduates’ rate of college completion. Fifty percent of the class of 2012 earned bachelor’s degrees within six years, compared with 11 percent of low-income students nationwide who earn four-year degrees by age 24, according to the Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education.

Nine out of 10 IDEA students are eligible for free or reduced-priced lunch, generally an indicator of poverty. The company typically operates campuses located near traditional schools rated as failing.

When governors in Texas and Louisiana closed school campuses due to the coronavirus pandemic, IDEA quickly pivoted to distance learning for its 52,000 students and distributed more than 12,000 laptops to students in need. IDEA also provided wireless routers and mobile hotspots. Teachers have kept students up to speed with a combination of live instruction, recorded instruction and work packets.

In addition, the company has provided mobile meals to students younger than 18 who live in communities where IDEA schools are located.

“While this has been a new experience for most of us, our students, teachers and families have risen to the challenge,” Miller said.

The coronavirus hasn’t delayed the company’s plans to expand to Florida.

“IDEA is on track to open our first four schools in Tampa in 2021 and Jacksonville in 2022,” Miller said. “Over the next six years we will open 32 schools across Florida, creating 25,000 high-quality seats for kids in neighborhoods with persistently low-performing public schools.”

May 4, 2020 1 comment

Blog Guest Charter Schools Commentary and Opinion Customization Education Choice Education Equity Featured Jack Coons School Choice

Give them our tired and our poor

John E. Coons April 30, 2020

John E. Coons

The leader of our teachers unions, national and local, appear to live in dread of our states subsidizing choice of school for the low-income parent. These mighty monopolies of the children of our have-not families seem convinced of their own schools’ vulnerability to competition; the liberated mother appears all too likely to execute a quick bail-out for her child.

Here in California, we get to watch the union function in constant paranoia; ever protecting the status quo, it has nourished a rare cordiality with Sacramento, where its influence has kept charter schools very limited in numbers far below the evident parental demand. Family choice threatens their sovereignty over the poor; hence, the charter gets labeled a bad influence, a threat to our otherwise ideal system.

Maybe some charters are, in fact, not so good; their teachers can be sloppy, their facilities second rate, the atmosphere gloomy, and test scores a point or two below average. Just because most of them are popular, who needs such disasters becoming available to all parents?

We all do.

Markets, in due course, can dispose of the inferior few that will always exist; we can happily risk the short-lived, third-rate charter in order to secure the only mechanism – choice – that works to clear the system of failures. Competition among institutions allows customers to decide which school should live. If Happy Hollow Elementary disappoints, mothers and fathers can choose again in hope of getting it right this time.

All of us make mistakes (or so I hear). But these inevitable errors can be part of a valuable learning experience for both parent and child. Mother and father may come to realize that Joey was better off back at his underrated assigned public school. Or, more likely, their empowerment will move them to try a second charter (or private) school, one that appears free of the faults of both schools they have decided to abandon.

Learning from our mistakes can have happy consequences for us humans; in our school domain, there are four such outcomes that seem quite obvious:

· The public school that loses students by parental choice just might awaken to its own failures and mend them, hopefully making itself competitive for the future.

· The parent will, at last, experience the stimulus of real authority, power, and sheer dignity – hence of responsibility.

· The child will begin to appreciate the parent as sovereign and caring, hence of family, as a blessing.

· The society will have given its citizens the chance to become responsible actors in the human story.

Unless our civic aim were to maintain our historical regime of servitude, there is no real downside.

The securing of school choice for the impoverished family can take a wide variety of practical legislative forms. The design of state systems that will truly protect that family from discrimination in the private sector and that will do this without threatening the scholastic identity of the school itself is a challenge.

Over the years, Stephen Sugarman and I designed a half-dozen or more diverse models, all aiming to protect the uniqueness of both seller and buyer; none is perfect, but all, I can hope, would be workable and politically prudent. Of course, the form adopted would very likely vary from state to state in their structure.

Reform in pursuit of choice for the poor may, in many states, entail political earthquake in order to become reality. However, that reality excuses none of us from rejecting this nation’s indefensible and degrading treatment of families lacking the resources that the rest of us carefully display in the parental hope to realize the latent capacities and vision of our descendants.

April 30, 2020 1 comment

Charter Schools Coronavirus / COVID-19 Education Choice Featured News Public School Choice School Choice Virtual Education

“We’re not changing the rigor.” In the wake of closures, this school isn’t letting academics slide

Ron Matus April 9, 2020

Ron Matus

Dayspring Academy secondary school principal Tim Greenier and assistant principal Jennifer Smith address students in a virtual morning assembly, encouraging them to continue focusing on academics in their online environment.

Editor’s note: Scroll to the end of this post to watch a portion of Dayspring Academy’s virtual morning assembly, in which assistant principal Jennifer Smith encourages students to “finish this year strong.”

PORT RICHEY, Fla. – The new, online, morning assembly at Dayspring Academy began one day last week with a montage of smiling teachers, set to theme music from “Saturday Night Live.” The secondary school principal and assistant principal kept it laid-back, with their ball caps and coffee mugs. But a few minutes in, they had a serious message for 350 middle and high school students watching on screens at home.

“School” is different now, but it’s still school. Course work needs to be done. Tests are coming up. We need to finish the year strong.

“I want everybody to know this,” principal Tim Greenier said, clasping his hands for emphasis. “We’re not changing the rigor.”

“You need to have this education to be prepared for next year,” he continued. “If we were to just stop now, none of you would be ready for next year. And it would create a challenge. We’re just not prepared to do that.”

Across America, schools are scrambling to figure out what’s doable and appropriate as tens of millions of students switch at a snap to distance learning. Many have decided to go light on academics.

But not all of them.

Dayspring is a PreK-12 charter school with 935 students, 50 miles north of Tampa. When the closures happened, it already had a good bit of digital tech in its tool belt. It quickly filled gaps with devices and connections, then sought to construct an online environment that could approximate the style of learning, built around the Core Knowledge curriculum, that existed on its four brick-and-mortar campuses.

The result: Class is still in session. Dayspring elementary students alone have four, 30-minute core classes every morning, using Schoology and Google Classroom platforms with teachers and classmates. After lunch, they do about two hours of art, dance and other electives. Time for group projects is worked in. So is one-on-one time with teachers. From 3 to 4 p.m., most of them cluster for school clubs, from Legos to ukuleles.

Dayspring students are still being graded and tested. They will still have final exams and report cards. And if attendance is an indicator of engagement, the school is locked in. It averaged 35-45 absences a day before the crisis. It’s averaging six a day now.

“We don’t expect to skip a beat,” said John Legg, a former state senator who co-founded Dayspring 20 years ago with his wife, Suzanne Legg. “We think we’re going to use muscles we haven’t used before and strengthen them. We’re going to be sore. But it’s because we’re developing new muscles.”

At this point in America’s big experiment, Dayspring doesn’t appear to be the norm. State officials in Michigan decided online learning won’t count towards seat-time requirements this year. State officials in Oregon initially told virtual charter schools they had to shut down. It’s not hard, via this database from the Center for Reinventing Public Education, to find districts that have deemed online learning “optional,” or determined their schools won’t be grading students.

On the flip side, there are districts pushing hard (like this one), and charter schools and other schools of choice doing likewise (like these, these, and these). In Rhode Island, Gov. Gina Raimondo told students: “This isn’t vacation. This isn’t time to chill out at home. This is school. Work as hard and as serious as you would as if you were in real school.”

In the 16 years Dayspring has been graded by the state, it’s earned 15 A’s. Forty-eight percent of its students are low-income; 27 percent are students of color. That’s compared to 56 percent and 39 percent for the district it resides in.

Legg is a rare bird. A former chairman of the Senate Education Committee, he was regarded by members of both parties as knowledgeable, thoughtful, even-keeled. He recently earned his doctorate in education, with his dissertation on early college high schools. (Legg is also a member of the board of directors for Step Up For Students, which hosts this blog.)

It doesn’t seem right to hold up any school as a model right now. The challenges are so huge and varied. Nobody has all the answers. But it also doesn’t make sense to ignore schools, like Dayspring, that continue to aim for learning gains.

In Ms. Speer’s third-grade class this week, 25 students dove into colonial America. Ms. Speer had them post their questions about colonists into a program called Nearpod. Within a minute, what looked like Post-it notes mushroomed across the screen. How did the Pilgrims survive on the Mayflower? Why were they only in North America and not any other country? Did people celebrate any holidays such as Christmas, Halloween, Easter, or even their birthdays?

“Guys,” Ms. Speer said through the screen, “your questions are amazing.”

In Ms. Manczak’s class, 20 fourth-graders learned soil types, contrasted physical and chemical weathering, and were reminded “humous” isn’t “hummus.” Ms. Manczak put on a master class in multi-tasking. She deftly called on students, fed them bite-sized bits of knowledge and navigated a new learning platform without breaking a sweat. Some of her students were still adjusting to mics and mutes and chat functions, but disruptions were minimal.

In sixth-grade history, Mr. Marecki used a unit on the Industrial Revolution as fodder for debate about whether teachers, lawyers, military officers or the CEO of Apple should make the most money. One student argued for military officers: they’re willing to give up their lives to protect others. True, said another, but teachers trained them for success. Ah, but “anybody can grow up to be a teacher,” said a third. “Only certain people can, like, become a CEO.”

Mr. Marecki smiled without raising an eyebrow.

Dayspring is making changes as teachers learn what works and what doesn’t. There’s consensus the middle school classes should be longer than 30 minutes. There’s worry the more advanced students aren’t being challenged. There’s a desire to provide more social engagement, but a realization they just don’t know how yet.

“We’re building this plane as we’re flying it,” Legg said.

Not easy for any school right now. But at Dayspring, sitting on the runway wasn’t an option.

April 9, 2020 2 comments

Charter Schools Courts Education and Public Policy Education Legislation Education Politics Featured News School Choice

Justices turn down challenge to education law

Special to redefinED April 7, 2020

Special to redefinED

Passage of HB 7069, characterized by school boards as an unconstitutional infringement on their rights to operate public schools, was a priority of then-House Speaker Richard Corcoran.

Jim Saunders, News Service of Florida

TALLAHASSEE – Nearly three years after lawmakers passed a controversial measure that sought to bolster charter schools, the Florida Supreme Court on Tuesday turned down a constitutional challenge by county school boards.

The Supreme Court, as is common, did not explain its unanimous decision to decline to take up the case. But the decision effectively let stand an August ruling by the 1st District Court of Appeal and was a victory for the Florida Department of Education and the Republican-controlled Legislature.

School boards argued that the mammoth law, known in education circles by the shorthand HB 7069, was an unconstitutional infringement on their rights to operate public schools. Passage of the law in May 2017 was a priority of then-House Speaker Richard Corcoran, a Land O’ Lakes Republican who is now the state education commissioner.

Corcoran and other school-choice supporters used the measure to try to direct additional money to charter schools and to authorize “schools of hope,” a new type of charter school aimed at areas where children have been served by low-performing traditional public schools.

In a brief asking the Supreme Court to take up the case, attorneys for nine school boards argued that disputed parts of the law “unconstitutionally transfer control over operational decisions from local school boards to unelected Florida state employees” at the Department of Education. Also, they argued the law creates a “parallel system of public schools.”

As examples, the school boards pointed to parts of the law designed to provide more building funds and federal Title I money to charter schools. The building funds involved money raised through local property taxes for capital-improvement projects, while the Title I program provides money to schools that serve large numbers of low-income students.

The nine school boards who appealed to the Supreme Court were from Alachua, Bay, Broward, Hamilton, Lee, Orange, Polk, St. Lucie and Volusia counties.

“On the merits, this case concerns the constitutional balance between the state’s duty to provide for and supervise the system of public education and local school boards’ constitutional duty to operate, control, and supervise local schools,” the school boards’ brief, filed in October, said. “The First District ignored this balance, giving the state carte blanche to regulate what were previously considered local matters.”

But Department of Education attorneys, in a November brief, said the 1st District Court of Appeal had ruled correctly on the issues and that the Supreme Court should not hear the case.

“(The) First District’s decision applied existing decisions interpreting decades-old constitutional provisions,” the department’s attorneys wrote. “Petitioners disagree with those decisions and want this (Supreme) Court to ‘examine’ the interplay between those provisions. But those provisions have been considered, and harmonized, by this court and the district courts, and will continue to be. This court should reject petitioners’ invitation to contemplate a non-existent conflict.”

The Tallahassee-based appeals court rejected the arguments about the property-tax money and Title I funds. It also said school boards did not have legal standing to challenge other parts of the law, including the part establishing schools of hope. It cited court precedents and a legal doctrine that effectively limits the ability of public officials to challenge the constitutionality of state laws.

“The school boards’ constitutional challenge to HB 7069’s provisions represents their disagreement with new statutory duties enacted by the Legislature,” the appeals-court ruling said. “As the foregoing authority makes clear, however, the school boards must presume that the provisions at issue are constitutional.”

April 7, 2020 0 comment

Blog Guest Charter Schools Commentary and Opinion Coronavirus / COVID-19 Education and Public Policy Education Politics Featured Jonathan Butcher School Choice Virtual Education

Charter schools adjusting instruction during pandemic

Jonathan Butcher April 7, 2020

Jonathan Butcher

Families will remember March 2020 for how quickly state officials closed schools due to the coronavirus outbreak. If schools want to offer parents and children continuity and stability, educators and policymakers must focus in April on jump-starting instruction while students are at home.

Yet some state policymakers are finding new ways to limit learning options during the pandemic. A Portland, Ore., news source, the Willamette Week, said Oregon officials closed brick-and-mortar schools along with full-time virtual schools – “the definition of social distancing,” according to the news site.

Now, state officials are calling for districts to submit distance learning plans by April 13, but as the Wall Street Journal reported, along with at least one virtual school in the state, the Oregon Department of Education is not allowing students to transfer into virtual schools while schools are closed.

Back east, as of April 1, all Pennsylvania schools, including virtual charter schools, are closed “until further notice.” Gov. Tom Wolf even signed a bill that will withhold state spending for new students who enroll in virtual schools.

David Hardy, founder of Boy’s Latin of Philadelphia, said in a webinar last week focused on charter school activities during the pandemic that Philadelphia district administrators told teachers to stop developing online resources.

“Some teachers who, as soon as this thing hit, they were good teachers and were already connected with their classes,” Hardy says. “They didn’t have to wait for somebody downtown to tell them to do that.”

Hardy continued: “What happened, though, was that the [Philadelphia] school district stopped them from doing this.”

Hardy, who also serves as school board chair for Ad Prima Charter School, said his school is not waiting for the state to issue instructions; the school plans to distribute laptop computers to students without devices at home.

“When you look at how people have responded, it’s my opinion that the charter schools are really out front in this, right away,” Hardy said.

As adults scramble to help children adapt to changes brought on by the virus, our K-12 students do not need perfection. But they do need parents and teachers alike to try.

In Maryvale, Ariz., west of Phoenix, teachers at Western School of Science and Technology (WSST) made sure students could use school devices at home while schools are closed. Eighty percent of WSST students speak a language other than English in their homes, and 95 percent qualify for free or reduced-priced meals, said school director Peter Boyle.

Prior to the pandemic, WSST students divided their time between online instruction and interactions with their teachers.

“We have a significantly high degree of technology penetration and familiarity that allows for a pretty quick switch to this remote learning plan,” Boyle said.

His teachers developed a system of academic playlists, where students access instruction in small bits – 1- to 2-minute segments in some cases.

“A playlist is a personalized learning plan,” Boyle said. “Each teacher populates a playlist, which has about 200 minutes of content, from the online learning programs or from reading materials that we can push out to students.”

Students can choose the order in which they complete the work. Additionally, the school is building on its existing routine of part-time virtual instruction now that all instruction must be online.

In South Carolina, the Charter Institute at Erskine is encouraging all schools to take a similar approach and learn from existing full-time virtual schools. The school is building a library of web videos using the virtual schools to help brick-and-mortar teachers adjust, said Vamshi Rudrapati, director of the Institute.

Julie Phillips, 2019 Charter Institute teacher of the year, who is a virtual school teacher, said in an interview that the best solution, even for teachers who are not experienced with online instruction, is to help students continue “to master and build existing skills.”

“Look at it week by week,” Phillips said. “Every subject that we want them to work on for Monday, use it as a checklist. Check it off, then go to the next subject.”

Many teachers, especially in charter schools, are trying to reach students during the virus, and state officials should encourage these efforts. The pandemic forced physical separation on family, work, and school communities, but it shouldn’t separate teachers and students from ingenuity.

April 7, 2020 0 comment

Featured School Choice

Curriculum reformers vs what’s best for students, Part 2

Matthew Ladner March 13, 2020

Matthew Ladner

Curriculum reformers occasionally get annoyed about school choice, but choice remains the most effective mechanism by which families can access varying curricular offerings.

Last week, I wrote about a charter school’s announcement in 2013 that it would open in a North Phoenix neighborhood and how that decision heralded curricular changes at nearby schools. Repercussions included a banner across the front of Shea Middle School that screamed in 9,000-point type. I investigated further and found that while one of Shea Middle’s feeder elementary schools, Mercury Mine Elementary, adopted and stayed with Core Knowledge, Shea Middle School did not.

From the current (2020) Paradise Valley Unified School District website:

So, despite the giant banner, Shea Middle School did not stick with Core Knowledge. This is not surprising; Core Knowledge is a minority sect in a country with an established religion. Colleges of Education and unionized district employees tend to have very different curricular preferences than followers of E.D. Hirsch Jr., founder and chairman of the Core Knowledge Foundation. The increase in the pluralism of area schools failed to prompt sustained curricular changes at Shea, but Mercury Mine, in the same neighborhood and part of the same district, and whose students feed into Shea Middle School, stayed the course.

The state’s accountability exam, AZMerit, provides a consistent data source between 2015 and 2019. The chart below displays the academic trends for both schools:

Mercury Mine started off better than average in both English Language Arts and Math in 2015 and improved substantially. Shea Middle started below the statewide average and stayed there. Many factors influence scores, so this is far from proof-positive that Core Knowledge made the difference at Mercury Mine, and the over-time trend is more important than the passing percentages due to the varying grade levels of tests. Having said that, it appears that Mercury Mine chose wisely.

Before the introduction of charters into the area, it’s likely that there were no schools using Hirsch-type curriculum in this part of Phoenix. Now there are three – two charters and one traditional district elementary. The latter has improved substantially.

Curriculum reformers should leverage choice in order to increase family access to high-demand curriculum. It’s not magical, but it spurs progress.

March 13, 2020 0 comment

2020 Presidential Election Blog Guest Charter Schools Chris Stewart Commentary and Opinion Education and Public Policy Education Choice Education Equity Featured Funding Opinion School Choice

Presidential candidates do not think all children are created equal

Chris Stewart February 28, 2020

Chris Stewart

Editor’s note: This column from redefinED guest blogger Chris Stewart first appeared Feb. 25 on Education Post.

I’m starting to notice a trend among the presidential candidates. I don’t think they’re vying to be a president who represents all Americans, just some. It sounds crazy but hear me out.

When Democratic frontrunners lavish attention on traditional public schools to the exclusion of charters, privates, and homeschoolers, it’s as if the worth of a child instantly plummets the moment they are enrolled in a disfavored school. As if their families don’t pay taxes and aren’t worthy as voters. Never mind the fact that many of the candidates have taken advantage of these same options.

Not to be outdone, President Trump got in on the action when he released a budget that cut funding for charter schools but increased funding for privates. Some of his supporters have told me not to worry because one, a president’s budget is a fictional thing, and two, the funding for charter schools is just being bundled together with other programs. It’s called “block granting” and that’s a good thing because it can give states the flexibility to use the money in a way that makes sense for their local context.

That sounds great in theory until you consider the fact that flexibility in a state like California, the largest charter system in America, could easily fall victim to union politics. Handing over charter school money would be a financial love letter to a fickle governor, one that would give him Thanos-like powers to snap his fingers and freeze charters startups.

But maybe I’m making too much of this.

The candidates would respond to me by saying they aren’t proposing the elimination of charter schools. They just want to slow their growth. And, the block-granting of federal funds isn’t the end-all of charter funding. And, after all, maybe there is more to life than charters. Most of the candidates are proposing enormous new investments that will grow school staff and provide more services to kids.

Who can complain about that? I can.

Yes, research shows that money matters in public education, but some of the nation’s biggest spenders are still hot zones of poor achievement and unacceptable results. Teachers unions and their allies have cleverly called for things like “community schools” as a main investment. It sounds good until you consider the fact that many of the existing community schools need help. Lots of it.

And no matter how much you wrap kids in services, it will still be a problem that our nation’s teachers aren’t recruited from the top of the class, their preparation is trash, and the support of many of those who teach in the toughest schools is nonexistent. To cover this with “I-stand-with-teachers” happy talk is to prove oneself incapable of true leadership.

We need a leader who will stand up for all families. We need someone who will fight for every American child equally. Today, parents from around the country are headed to South Carolina in hopes of meeting with presidential candidates to urge them to bring about “big, bold changes.” Because the fact is, every child deserves a better education, and our current system isn’t offering that.

We need people who can bring us together rather than continuing the bad practice of pitting parents against each other, then siding with the groups that want one form of schooling to be the only form of schooling.

Which leader is that?

I’m looking.

February 28, 2020 0 comment

Charter Schools Commentary and Opinion Education and Public Policy Education Choice Education Politics Featured School Choice

Charters have 99 problems, but private choice is not one of them

Matthew Ladner February 24, 2020

Matthew Ladner

Recently, the Trump administration proposed consolidating several federal education programs into a single block grant to states, including federal charter school funding. The same budget proposal calls for the creation a federal private school tax credit program.

In other circumstances, both ideas would be worth a tussle on the merits. But the House hasn’t passed much of anything in the way of a budget in a long time. Our Senate Olympians, meanwhile, busy themselves by admiring their own reflections and asking, “How are you today, Mr./Madame President?” leaving little time to consider serious proposals from the House in the unlikely event something of the sort were to occur.

Trench warfare over K-12 policy is all too real, but it’s taking place in state capitols rather than Gucci Gulch. Yet Conor P. Williams, a fellow at The Century Foundation, took this budget proposal seriously enough to suggest that the charter movement divert energy from the fight against an ongoing onslaught to launch an attack against … the private choice movement.

Williams starts his piece in The 74 with a highly questionable thesis: The charter movement’s problem is that it has too many friends rather than too few. He then misrepresents polling results before moving on to a slanted review of the research on education choice literature.

After the Question 2 debacle in Massachusetts, some charter advocates in that state attempted to curry favor with Sen. Elizabeth Warren by reciting a litany similar to that presented in Williams’ article. Warren was so deeply impressed with this effort that she called for the elimination of federal charter funding entirely in her run for president. (It was the unions, their camp followers and a whole lot of left-leaning voters who crushed Question 2 by the way, not anyone from the private choice movement.)

Last year, California lawmakers passed legislation that will grind charter growth to a halt. Did an association with private choice efforts cause this to happen, or was it the relentless efforts of the California Teachers Association? Imagine if Golden State charter advocates had recited a triangulation litany against tax credits. Would hundreds of thousands of children waiting on California charter school wait lists have a shot at new schools?

Color me skeptical.

In Arizona, charter opponents want to force charter management organizations to issue a request for proposal to manage new schools. Charter management organizations, in other words, would raise millions of dollars needed to build facilities but would then turn management of those schools over to outsiders.

Arizona districts would of course never build a new school again if required to abide by such a practice. The sheer lunacy of such proposals does not engender confidence that even the most ostentatious anti-private choice virtual signaling would soothe the savage anti-charter beast.

Every so often, people need to be reminded of things. On a Fordham Foundation panel back in 2011, Step Up For Students founder and chairman John Kirtley noted there were six charter schools in Jacksonville, Fla., and 90 private schools serving low-income students through tax credits. Kirtley further noted that not all of the charter schools primarily served low-income children. He asked his debate opponents how much longer single mothers with children in the schools should wait for school options.

I don’t recall much in the way of a coherent response. Some nine years later, there are more charter schools in Jacksonville, but you would have a difficult time indeed arguing there are enough.

Doomed efforts at Jedi mind tricks are no substitute for the actual practice of coalition politics. Charter advocates have plenty of enemies and too few allies. There is no room for unwarranted technocratic vanity in the expansion of educational opportunity. After all, students have only one shot at a quality education.

February 24, 2020 0 comment