New overseer for charters urged
State board too consumed by charter petitions
Charter schools have become a time sink for the State Board of Education, with a third of its time spent dealing with schools serving 5 percent of California’s students. Relieving that burden is one reason that the Little Hoover Commission, a state oversight body, is recommending that California establish an independent body to directly authorize and oversee charter schools.
A California Board of Charter Schools would not replace local districts and county offices of education, which are still the primary authorizers of charters, but it would offer an alternative path for charter applicants, and, under the Little Hoover Commission’s plan, it would have the ability to revoke the authorizing power of local districts that are either too lax in monitoring charters or discriminatory in keeping them out. The Little Hoover Commission heard evidence that both situations exist.
Creating the charter school board is not a new idea. The Little Hoover Commission and the Legislative Analyst have recommended this before. And Caprice Young, the former CEO of the California Charter Schools Association, reports she urged it as well as a member of Gov. Schwarzenegger’s Committee on Education Excellence. With the continued rapid growth of charter schools – there are now 912, the most in any state by far – and the number of appeals before the State Board growing, the idea has again surfaced.
The Board of Charter Schools would operate within the state Department of Education, with its members appointed by the governor and the Legislature. The state Board of Education would continue to hear the appeals from charters denied by local districts and county education offices, and would keep its power to revoke poorly performing or dishonest charters. The Little Hoover Commission expects, however, that over time, the State Board of Education would see a diminishing caseload, opening up more time for it to focus on broader policy questions.
Colorado and Arizona also have independent charter authorizing boards. In several states, colleges and universities are charter authorizers as well, but the Little Hoover Commission said that California institutions of higher education have lobbied against the idea.
The report, Smarter Choices, Better Education: Improving California’s Charter Schools, recommends several other reforms.
- It endorses the idea of a performance contract between charters and authorizers to nail down commitments for academic progress and rights of charters to facilities. The charter petition doesn’t cover some of the negotiated specifics. The report recommends that the new board create model contracts.
- The Little Hoover Commission concluded that the criteria for renewing charters are too vague and “the bar is set too low, making it difficult for authorizers to close down poor-performing schools.” Therefore, the Legislature should rewrite renewal criteria while keeping them flexible enough not to punish charters that serve at-risk students.
- Because it takes at least several years for a new charter to establish itself and collect data on student performance, the report recommends that charters initially be granted for a minimum of five years. (The State Board of Education would still have revocation authority.) Accomplished charter schools should be granted charter extensions for up to 10 years.
Thank you for highlighting this problem. But is it worth creating an entire new board to deal with schools serving 5% of California’s students?
This is a problem that elected local school boards have with charter schools as well — the fact that a small number of charter schools and prospective charter schools use up far more than their share of time, energy, attention and other resources — at the expense of all the other schools and the students in those schools. That’s exacerbated when lobbyists and newspapers beat up on school boards for trying to do their due diligence in evaluating applications for new charters or for dealing with problem charters in their districts.
There’s a bigger issue here, of course — the question of the resources overall used by charter schools that serve 5% of California’s students — with, overall, no more success than public schools have.
Report this comment for abusive language, hate speech and profanity
In other words, the proposal is to have state-run schools overseen by an unelected board in Sacramento; all while the local elected district board has to provide monies and facilities.
I really don’t think we need more administrative layers in Sacramento (or the counties for that matter).
A much simpler solution would be to have county and state act as appeals courts; they hear the charter appeals, if the appeal is granted the local school district is compelled to charter the school. We make the economy of possibly two layers of remote (and inherently poor) oversight , and we align local schools with local funds.
Some of the changes mentioned for oversight seem to go in the right direction, just have the oversight be local.
Report this comment for abusive language, hate speech and profanity
I agree with many of the other letters here that it is far from clear why we need a new board within the already underfunded Dept. of Ed., especially one brought about by a measure worded as vaguely as this one is. Aside from the money, where is the accountability? From the Governor? What will Jerry Brown will do when it comes to approving curriculum specialists or administrators who know how to avoid bad ideas even when they promote the bottom line? These are sometimes in the bad graces of UTLA and/or CTA, and sometimes in everyone’s bad graces. Does anyone even pretend to know how the Governor will structure things in this arena? It’s hard to see how the legislature would be much better. Who, if anyone, will be running this new Charter School Board? We don’t get to vote, so we get to ask.
Best, Doug Lasken
Report this comment for abusive language, hate speech and profanity
This just adds more evidence to my contention that the idea of charter schools’ creating compatition for bad schools has never been the real reason for their being advocated. In my paper, THE DECEPTION OF CHARTER SCHOOLS, I point out that “government has never been able, nor can it create true competition in the sense of free market context. By its very nature and authority of the “power of the sword” to tax, it also must control , and rightly so, if the the constitutional principle of taxation with representation still stands………Publicly funded “private” schools are an oxymoron. Charter schools play on the idea that parents can have something resembling private schools and have government pay for it. What government funds, government controls, and that includes charter schools.
“The carrot of charter schools may appear sweet in the short term until local jurisdictions are destroyed. Then the long term deception will manifest itself”. The process of regulating charter schools outside elected school boards is what the Little Hoover Commission’s plan is all about.
The whole concept of charter schools is but a bridge to nationalizing/internationalizing schools
to conform to global standards. One observer said it well, “I takes the local out of local control”.
Report this comment for abusive language, hate speech and profanity
One might argue that the SBE through its composition and its choice has become a “California Board of Charter Schools”. Charter schools are public schools; funding, policy and oversight should remain under the same umbrella. Charters and legislators should be encouraging closer integration with local districts rather than setting up costly and inefficient parallel bureaucracies.
Report this comment for abusive language, hate speech and profanity
Until I found out about the commission and asked to attend at the Nov, 2009 meeting, there was no one to voice concerns about discrimination of the disabled in Charter schools. They had not thought to consider Foster Youth until the March 2010 meeting that I requested they have in LA so parent leaders could express their concerns. How can a school that relies so much on parent involvement expect to enroll foster students? Charters do no outreach for these students either.
The commission (also comprised of people favorable to charters) heard and accepted my data, but the report conclusions gloss over the major concerns that there is literally no mechanism in place to provide effective oversight regarding the discrimination of these children. Laws should be strengthened regarding the necessity to enroll all children who wish to attend, but those efforts always fall short when the California Charter Schools Association uses their lobbying power funded by “membership dues” of $5 per ADA per Charter School.
LAUSD’s board has handed out Charters like candy over the last seven years and now we have so many it’s impossible to provide proper oversight…but then no one was really concerned with that at the time.
The State Dept of Ed doesn’t help, either. For the last several years we have not been able to access DataQuest information concerning “enrollment by disability” by individual school, only at the district level, which doesn’t help a family in school choice. When I asked why no data, I was told that the schools submitted “faulty” information. If that was true, then all data should be suspect and they shouldn’t post any “student demographics” data, but they get away with it. As one person making complaints – no one cares or listens.
Charters are a business. Their “best practices” cannot be replicated in public schools because our public schools are not allowed to discriminate against the disabled or English Language Learners. I’ve spoken to my school board, the State Board of Education, the Little Hoover Commission and written to newspapers. No one wants to hear it. Charters are the sexy, new way to teach and critics be damned.
Report this comment for abusive language, hate speech and profanity
I wondered why the data for students with disabilities at individual schools had vanished from Dataquest. I went over it for the schools in my district at one point, when it was still available (obviously), and it did reveal pretty major disparities — not just the hard numbers, but the absence of the most challenging disabilities (severely emotionally disturbed being an obvious example) in the charter schools.
Report this comment for abusive language, hate speech and profanity
“with a third of its time spent dealing with schools serving 5 percent of California’s students”, yet charter school law only permits local education agencies (LEA) take take 1%, or 3% depending on circumstances, of charter revenue to provide oversight. Education Code requires a report of the cost of oversight of charter schools. I am still trying to find the report on the CDE or State websites. Also charter school law, except in the financial arena, never defines the parameters of oversight for the local LEA in the apparently unimportant areas of curriculum and insturction and school governace. Why is that? It is also not surprising at all the a former CEO of the Charter School Association is advocating a separate (rubber stamp for approval) commission to oversee charter schools…she must be looking for a new job. What would this new commission cost the tax payers? Where would the money come from-Proposition 98, thereby decreasing more money available to academic programs? Charter schools performance is no different than regualr public schools, there are good ones and bad ones…the most significant difference is that goverance boards in school districts are elected and have to live by a code of ethics established by Government Code to ensure the propoer use of public funds provided…charter schools do not.
Report this comment for abusive language, hate speech and profanity