Fight brewing over new controls on charter schools
The chairwoman of the Assembly Education Committee is citing embezzlement charges against the operators of a Southern California charter school organization as evidence why her two charter school accountability bills should become law.
The bills are sponsored by Democrat Julia Brownley of Santa Monica. They are now in the Senate, which must decide whether new laws could prevent the type of alleged fraud by the husband-wife creators of Ivy Academia charters, and if not, whether additional financial oversight and restrictions on charters are needed anyway.
AB 572, which was waylaid by the Senate last year, would prohibit anyone with a financial interest in a charter from serving on its board of trustees. It also would require that charters follow state open meeting and records laws – a gray area in the law – and that board members file financial conflict of interest statements.
AB 1950, which the Assembly passed this month but can expect a rougher treatment in the Senate, would impose new auditing requirements for charters as well as stiffer academic criteria for renewing them. It also would ban for-profit charter operators, although that provision may have more symbolic than practical impact.
In the case that Brownley cited, Yevgeny Selivanov, 38, and Tatyana Berkovich, 32, face five felony counts of misappropriation of public funds and embezzlement totaling more than $200,000. The couple, who run four charter schools, are charged with shifting public money to a for-profit preschool located next to one of the charters.
On its face, the financial requirements of AB 1950 appear straightforward enough. Charters would have to hire an auditor from an approved list, as do other public entities, and there would be special rules for charters drawn up by an audit oversight group, in consultation with the California Charter Schools Assn.
But audits are expensive and time-consuming, especially for individual charter schools. The charter schools association is legitimately worried that a case of alleged fraud, which a standard audit might not detect anyway, could lead to excessive paperwork demands by the state and chartering districts.
Shell game by for-profit operators?
Selivanov and Berkovich didn’t run for-profit charters, and there are few such operators, such as EdisonLearning, operating in California. Charters should be run by non-profit boards and use money saved from efficiencies back into the operation, for longer school days, more teacher training, competitive salaries and professional development. That’s what many successful charters do.
Banning for-profit operations should ensure that state money goes to priorities set by a nonprofit board of directors – and not into the pockets of investors. Taxpayers have a right to that demand.
But a simple ban on for-profit charters won’t get to the heart of the more complex and potentially problematic financial arrangements in which for-profit corporations establish charters run by supposedly independent boards of directors. Publicly traded K12 Inc. has done this in establishing online schools, the California Virtual Academies. For-profit companies like K12 then become the sole-source providers of student content for the schools. Whether the non-profit boards are truly independent or have just a veneer of control will depend on how trustees are appointed, who serves on the boards and board members’ authority to demand quality services and control prices.
Transparency will be critical. AB 572, which will ban trustees with financial interests from serving on boards of directors, may help keep an arm’s-length relationship. But the Legislature and school districts that grant charters must scrutinize the financial relationships closely.
New grounds for not non-renewal of charters
AB 1950 would also set new academic criteria for granting and renewing charters that the California Charter Schools Assn., the chief lobby for charter schools, is opposing. The charter advocacy group EdVoice, also has called on its supporters to fight the bill.
Even charter advocates admit that bad charter schools are driving down the average test scores of all charters and giving the sector a bad name. But so far they’ve paid lip service to the issue. There’s been no agreement on how to weed out ineffective charters without ensnaring charter schools that are working hard with the most difficult to educate students.
Some of AB 1950’s proposed regulations would appear sensible; others, depending on how they’re enforced, could be troublesome.
- Schools seeking a charter would have to serve similar populations of students as the school district as a whole. The concern is that some charters don’t serve – or intentionally avoid – low-income and special education students. But oversubscribed charters must choose students by lottery. So the bill would have to work around that requirement, perhaps by awarding minority students higher odds in a lottery. Also, schools whose mission is to educate underserved minorities should be allowed to do so, regardless of a district’s overall demographics.
- Under current law, charters whose test scores at least match those of surrounding district schools are renewed for five years. That would be eliminated. Instead, schools that have been in school improvement for at least seven years – facing penalties for poor performance – would not have their charters renewed. Schools that are in school improvement for any length of time would have a charter renewal for no more than three years. And charter authorizers would have the discretion to grant a renewal for as little as one year.
If there were an objective and effective oversight system, this would make sense. But renewals are time-intensive for charter schools, and some districts antagonistic to charters could use a one or two year renewal to create instability and uncertainty among charter parents. Since nearly all public schools will soon be in school improvement status – unless federal No Child Left Behind law is changed – it doesn’t make sense to use discredited criteria to decide the fate of charter schools.
The California Charter Schools Assn. is suggesting a model that measures individual students’ academic growth, a more refined instrument. But the state’s data system can’t accommodate that yet. In the interim, charter defenders and Brownley should reach a compromise on new accountability rules.
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Charter school fraud is nothing new or novel. Take a look at Islamic Imman Fetullah Gulen (Gulen Movement) manages 97 Charter Schools throughout the USA. In California, the Magnolia Science Academys (los angeles) and Bay Area Technology (2 in Northern California) are manged by the numerous Gulen foundations: Willow Educations, MERF, Accord Institute, Pacifica Instiute. that is just the foundations on the west coast. Dr. Suleyman Bahceci is the “superintendent” but is ALSO on on the boards of several of these money machines. You can check out 990 IRS returns for free at http://www.guidestar.com Gulen schools are using our money to immigrate teachers from Turkey under HB-1 Visas, Texas’s Harmony Science through their Cosmos Foundation has over 1,100 HB-Visas since 2001 alone. Then there is the teaching of Turkish language, dance and songs. They perform these at the Turkish Olympaid in the USA and they get a trip to Turkey to perform with other worldwide Gulen Schools for the politicians of Turkey. WHY are we paying for this again????
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AB 1950 is a terrible bill. As written, it would pretty much eliminate virtual charter schools. Those families who choose to homeschool through a virtual charter are likely going to vary in their demographics from the overall public school population in the district. Also, homeschoolers tend to put a lot less emphasis on “teaching to the test” and therefore their students aren’t likely to score as high as if they were in the “all test prep all the time” traditional schools.
The educrats would love to see virtual charter families go back to private homeschooling, where they pay a boatload of taxes but don’t receive any services for it.
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I came across this article when I had noticed the previous comment about Gulen Schools. What is up with that? Our school in Arizona does have teachers and principals acting on the board also. Is this really illegal? Who is this Gulen guy and what is so bad about him? Doe anyone have the answers for this?
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I have heard of this Gulen character, he has many articles associated with him and his world wide Islamic schools. An ex teacher started a web site called http://www.charterschoolwatchdog.com
Looks like they got lots of information on this group for shifting monies around. Poor kids get a raw deal every time.
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I don’t believe anyone wants people to go back to true homeschooling. What they want is for us to shove our precious little guys into a regular school where they can learn all about being delinquents from the rest of the kids in the overfilled, understaffed classes. This is not out of concern for our children but for the funds paid to the schools for each child. My children are enrolled in a K12 virtual school. I dread the day they make it impossible for us to do right by our kids. We will be leaving the state if that happens… and taking the taxes we pay with us.
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I think this would be highly damaging to many families using public charter school options, especially those in a virtual academies. Our family chooses the virtual academy option due to extensive medical needs of our non-school aged child. Sending my kids to a typical brick and mortar school would endanger the health, safety, and life of our medically fragile child. it would also force my gifted child to be taught to the lowest common denominator, when he is at least 2 grade levels above his age-similar peers. I believe the state is trying to force our children into a public school system in an effort to try to save their crumbling education system, however they need to look more at how far behind our public school children are in comparison to the rest of the country, and even the rest of the world. Fix the education system and more parents would be willing to enroll their children in typical public schools.
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What gets me is those who introduce these bills don’t send their own children to the public schools where they are trying to force my child to go. Perhaps if they let their children endure the garbage my child would have been forced to if there weren’t other options, they’d have a different outlook. This isn’t about financial accountability. It’s about re-appropriating goverment funding that would otherwise pad their own pockets. Schools in low-income areas have government money promised to them for improvement that they NEVER see along with superintendents that charge personal items to district credit cards although their monthly income is equivalent to parent’s annual income. If they want to institute financial accountability, perhaps they should start with their own system instead of “monitoring” what these content rich, student focused charters do with theirs. Furthermore, our children should not be forced to make California Missions out of toilet paper rolls or be denied active Music programs because their system of accountability is shoddy, at best. Students in traditional low-income brick and mortar schools are failing largely because the focus is some poorly designed state test and not actual learning. Seriously, don’t penalize my child by teaching him to the test. No child left behind equals YOUR child can’t excel. SENATORS: Send your child to one of these inner city public schools and see if you won’t be demanding better options. I dare you.
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Well since star testing is in many of our opinions the main reason Public schools are churning out non-thinkers who aren’t even ready for basic college courses or even life in general, this really sucks. I send me child to a charter because they DON’T teach to the test. I will have to homeschool if this happens. This also effectively eliminate Waldorf Charters, since they don’t teach reading til 2nd grade and thus test scores have always been lower in k-4 (though they are often higher in 5+ grades). We are so behind in our education philosophy here. Japan got rid of their version of STAR testing years ago, cause they realized it doesn’t work.
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