Flawed Report Gives an Inaccurate Picture of Charter Schools

Editor’s Note: This analysis was published by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools on December 11, 2019. The analysis released by NAPCS addresses Still Asleep at the Wheel, a publication released by the anti-charter school group, the Network for Public Education (NPE):

We think it’s vital to keep tabs on the pulse of all things related to charter schools, including informational resources, and how to support school choice, charter school growth, and the advancement of the charter school movement as a whole. We hope you find this—and any other article we curate—both interesting and valuable.

Bad Data and False Assumptions in Still Asleep at the Wheel

Today, Nina Rees, president and CEO of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, published the following statement regarding Still Asleep at the Wheel, a publication released by the anti-charter school group, the Network for Public Education (NPE):

“Charter schools have been, and are, a lifeline to millions of students—many of them poor, black, and brown. And the federal Charter Schools Program (CSP) has provided vital seed funding for charter schools, allowing new schools to open and high-performing charter schools to replicate and expand in communities where there is a desperate need for high-quality public school options.

“The CSP, like every federal program, should be subject to careful oversight and thoughtful review—in order to safeguard taxpayer investments and the education of students. Unfortunately, the NPE ‘report’ is neither thoughtful nor careful. Instead, it is a reckless attack on an indispensable program, substituting half-truths, falsehoods, and unsubstantiated assertions for careful analysis.

“According to the U.S. Department of Education’s own analysis of 5,264 charter schools that have received state or direct Department funding, only 1.7 percent of CSP-funded charter schools close before their second year of operation. The Department’s analysis also found that the start-up success rate of charter schools that received CSP funding has improved as greater oversight has been implemented. Moreover, this report does not include data from grants awarded since the passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act, which greatly strengthened the CSP program. Since 2001, more than 96 percent of all CSP funds resulted in the opening of a charter school.

“The report also frames every closure—regardless of when or why it occurs—as a sign of waste. To the contrary, school closures indicate state charter school laws are working and authorizers are doing their job—closing schools that aren’t meeting their accountability agreements. This feature distinguishes charter schools from district-run schools, which can continue to remain open and spend taxpayer dollars even when they fail to provide a quality education for students. Furthermore, our review of publicly available data finds that, on average, four percent of charter schools close each year—nowhere near the picture this report attempts to paint.

“NPE incorrectly assumes that when a multi-year CSP grant award is made, funding is provided in its entirety up front. This is not true. Schools that never open receive only a fraction of the award amount—typically only utilizing ‘planning’ funds. Thus, if a school never opens it can’t receive its full CSP award. The NPE analysis dramatically overstates the amount of funding allocated to schools that never opened. This is just one example of the multiple problems with the report.

“The false claims contained in the report are unfortunately not surprising. NPE, its board, and its funders have long been more concerned with stopping the progress toward more high-quality public school options than ensuring that every child—regardless of zip code—has access to a high-quality education.

“NPE is a biased organization that is funded by the teachers’ unions, which are notoriously hostile to giving parents and students more choices in public education. In 2018, the American Federation of Teachers reported contributing $35,000 to the Network for Public Education Action. Between 2014 and 2016, the Chicago Teachers Union Foundation gave more than $300,000 to the Network for Public Education. This report is another attempt to put a veneer of data and research on a political effort to deny students public school choices. We would urge all readers to consider the source before embracing the finding.

“We at the National Alliance want the CSP to work well, especially for the estimated 5 million students who would attend a charter school if one were available to them. We are eager to promote an honest and fact-based evaluation of the program’s strengths as well as areas in which improvement is needed. Unfortunately, the NPE report has no place in such an assessment and instead spreads smoke where light is needed.”

For more information on why Still Asleep at the Wheel is filled with bad data and false assumptions, see our full analysis.

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What the 2020 Primary Candidates Get Wrong About Charter Schools

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published here on November 19, 2019, by the Wall Street Journal. It was written by David Osborne who leads the education work of the Progressive Policy Institute.

The Big Lie About Charter Schools

When Sen. Elizabeth Warren released her education plan, she trotted out a familiar charge against charter schools: that they “strain the resources of school districts.” To fight this supposed scourge, she promised to end federal financial support for new charter schools. And she’s not an outlier among the Democratic presidential hopefuls. Her fellow progressive Sen. Bernie Sanders had already charged, in his education plan, that charter schools’ “growth has drained funding from the public school system.” Even Joe Biden —who served under President Obama, an enthusiastic charter supporter—has picked up the refrain. “The bottom line” on chartering, he told an American Federation of Teachers town hall, “is, it siphons off money for our public schools, which are already in enough trouble.”

To begin with, charters themselves are public schools. The only difference is that they are operated independently of district bureaucracies, with more freedom to design their programs and choose their teachers but also more accountability. If charters fail—if their students fall too far behind—they are usually closed.

The same arguments made about charter school funding don’t make sense in other contexts. When a family moves out of a district, the district loses state and federal money for its child’s education, but no one accuses the family of draining funds from the district. When parents move their child to a private school, no one accuses them of sabotaging public schools.

So why are leading Democratic presidential primary candidates lambasting charters as a threat to public education? Because no interest group has more clout in the Democratic primaries than teachers unions. In the last presidential election, the AFT and National Education Association combined spent $64 million.

Whether charters drain money from public school districts depends on the state. In over half the states with charters, when students decamp some or all districts get to keep their local tax revenue but no longer have to educate the children, so they actually increase their spending per pupil. In Massachusetts and New York (outside New York City), the state cushions any revenue loss. By law, Massachusetts districts should be reimbursed 100% of the state money for the student for a year, then 25% for the next five years—though the state has only met about 60% of that funding since 2015.

The unions and their allies ignore these realities and focus on costs the districts can’t cut even as they lose students: pensions, principals’ salaries, building maintenance and utilities. These costs are real, but in a majority of charter states local revenue or the state-provided cushion covers most or all of them.

And the pension problem is exaggerated. As districts lose students, they reduce their number of teachers, which also reduces payments to the pension fund. If the pension system has been properly funded, there’s no negative impact. The real problem is that most states have fallen behind on their funding obligations, and now some districts are being forced, as in California, to play catch-up.

Mitigating the cost of building maintenance and utilities takes a little creative thinking. Districts can rent empty classrooms to preschool and adult-education providers. Once their schools are down to 75% capacity or below, they can lease the extra space to charter or private schools. In cities that aren’t afraid of charters, such as Washington and Denver, many school buildings house both a charter and a district school. When that’s not enough, districts can close buildings that are more than half empty and lease or sell them to charter schools.

None of this decreases the public education available to students, and it often improves the quality. But leaders of the teachers unions scream when school boards contemplate any of it.

That’s because unions shrink as charters grow. Charter schools are free to unionize, but as of last year only about 11% chose to do so. That doesn’t threaten teachers, who have more potential employers as the charter sector grows, more opportunity to choose a school that fits. But it does threaten the handsome pay union leaders receive—more than $400,000 a year for leaders of the NEA and AFT as well as more than $200,000 for other staff members.

Charter schools give millions of children—two-thirds of them nonwhite—the opportunity to get an education, go to college and move up the socioeconomic ladder. Even the unions’ favorite source of charter studies—they keep calling back to an outdated report of theirs—Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes, has found that by their fourth year in a charter, students learn about 2.5 months more in reading every year and around two more in math than demographically similar students with the same past test scores who stayed in local district schools. In urban districts, by their fourth year students are gaining a little under half a year in reading and a little over in math—every year—over their district peers.

Graduation rates, college-going rates and college completion rates are also higher among students who enroll in charter schools. And as a handful of studies have shown, competition from charters can push district and school leaders to improve their schools, to make them more attractive to parents.

Presidential candidates should worry about how to get Americans the most bang for our education buck. The data show that the answer is to grow the best charters, as Sen. Cory Booker proudly did when he was mayor of Newark, N.J.—something he had the courage to say when debate moderators asked him the charter question. In Wednesday’s debate, other candidates should follow his example.

Mr. Osborne, whose latest book is “Reinventing America’s Schools: Creating a 21st Century Education System,” leads the education work of the Progressive Policy Institute.

Correction
New York state cushions the revenue loss when students transfer to charter schools only for school districts outside New York City, and Illinois has not done so since 2009. An earlier version misstated this.

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What’s Next for Charter School Authorizer Greg Richmond?

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published here, on November 19th, by The 74 and was written by Beth Hawkins, senior writer and national correspondent at The 74.

‘Testifying Before Congress … Not as Fun as Working With People to Talk About a New School’: Charter Authorizing Guru Greg Richmond on Past 20 Years & What’s Next

For an admittedly small pond, it was quite the ripple: Greg Richmond has resigned from the National Association of Charter School Authorizers. Richmond had been with the organization for 20 years, first as its founding board chair and for the past 15 years as its president and CEO.

Vice President of Research and Evaluation Karega Rausch will serve as acting president and CEO while a search for a new leader takes place.

If you’re unsure why Richmond is a big fish, know that he is credited with pushing — no matter how much it meant swimming against the tide — to make sure the accountability part of public charter schools’ autonomy-for-accountability bargain is meaningful. As the entities that grant or deny the schools permission to open and then stay open, charter school authorizers need to set and — much more difficult — stand behind high standards, he insisted.

It will not surprise anyone, then, to hear that it’s a role that meant years of friendly — and not-so-friendly — fire. Three years ago, for example, the association was given the “rotten apple” award by Expose Liberal Charter School Turncoats, a group with ties to for-profit online charter schools, presumably for Richmond’s vocal role in insisting that states clamp down on the schools’ poor performance and questionable business practices.

Richmond “always believed that charter school authorizing, when practiced well, can improve the education and life outcomes of millions of children,” said Scott Pearson, association board chair and executive director of the DC Public Charter School Board. “We are enormously grateful for his service.”

In a recent exit interview with The 74, Richmond said he simply felt it was time for him to do something different and for the association to have new blood. “I don’t think it’s good for an organization to be led by the same person for too long,” he said. “It’s a good time for me, personally, to make changes.”

Specifically, Richmond said, he’s interested in spending more time talking to educators who have promising ideas for new schools. Which is exactly what he did in the early years of the charter school movement, as head of Chicago Public Schools’ New Schools Office.

At that time, there was tremendous excitement, particularly among teachers, about the idea of opening new schools. But not much attention was paid to the role of charter school authorizers, he recalled.

“It was viewed as a power, like a political power,” he said — but Richmond wanted policymakers to look beyond that control over who got to open a school and where, to the role authorizers could play in ensuring the new schools met high standards.

“There’s nothing automatically good about being a charter school. The school opens and then the work starts,” said Richmond. “A few years down the road, a decision has to be made whether the school is good enough to stay open.”

People were less eager to engage in this discussion, he recalled, even though for many of them, not tolerating poor performance indefinitely was a key ingredient of the charter school concept.

“Closing a school is incredibly difficult, and yet that’s one of the cornerstones of the charter school model,” Richmond said. “If it doesn’t work, we close it.”

Thus the association was born, with Richmond serving as founding board chair. The organization has pushed states to tighten charter school accountability laws and urged professionalization of the authorizing sector.

Partly as a result, he said, for each of the past few years, some 200 underperforming charter schools have closed. In the process, it’s become clearer how to minimize harm to students when a school shuts down. Criteria for closure must be clear and understood well in advance.

“We’ve learned that if the school and the authorizer reach that decision mutually, that’s the best place to be,” said Richmond. “Then the school and the authorizer can work together to figure out what best to do for kids.”

Charter School Report: Leaders of Color

Editor’s Note: This report was published by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools on November 18, 2019.

Profiles of Leaders of Color: Engaging Families

This is the second in a series of reports to be published by the National Alliance in partnership with Public Impact highlighting the experiences of school leaders of color in charter schools across the country. While the impact school leaders have on student performance has been well documented, there has been little attention to how leaders’ experiences and racial identities inform and influence their practice. While many practices of good leadership are universal, an individual’s identity shapes how they approach situations and can inspire new and innovative practices.

The report includes the profiles of three leaders of color—Maquita Alexander of Washington Yu Ying Public Charter School in Washington, D.C., Freddy Delgado is superintendent/principal at Amigos Por Vida Charter School in Houston, TX, and Kriste Dragon of Citizens of the World Charter Schools, a network of public charter schools with locations in Los Angeles, CA, and Kansas City, MO. Each of these leaders shared the belief that their school should engage families as genuine and active partners in their children’s education and the report identifies the concrete steps they took to put that belief into practice.

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Public Charter Schools Give Children an Option to Succeed

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published here on November 18, 2019, by the NY Times, and was written by Cory A. Booker, Democratic senator from New Jersey and a presidential candidate.

We think it’s vital to keep tabs on the pulse of all things related to charter schools, including informational resources, and how to support school choice, charter school growth, and the advancement of the charter school movement as a whole. Especially now, when so much is on the line with the upcoming presidential election, we hope you find this—and any other article we curate—both interesting and valuable

Cory Booker: Stop Being Dogmatic About Public Charter Schools

We can’t dismiss good ideas because they don’t fit into neat ideological boxes or don’t personally affect some of the louder, more privileged voices in the party.

About 15 years ago, when I was living in Brick Towers, a high-rise, low-income housing community in Newark’s Central Ward, a neighbor stopped me and told me about how her child’s public school was failing its students, like many others in our area at the time. Desperate, she asked if I knew a way to help get her child into a private school. She knew, as all parents do, that a great education was her child’s primary pathway to a better life.

My parents knew this all too well. When I was a baby, they fought to move our family into a community with well-funded public schools. These neighborhoods, especially in the 1960s and ’70s, were often in exclusively white neighborhoods. And because of the color of my parents’ skin, local real estate agents refused to sell my parents a home. My parents responded by enlisting the help of activists and volunteers who then set up a sting operation to demonstrate that our civil rights were being violated. Because of their activism we were eventually able to move into the town where I grew up.

Fifty years later, access to a high-quality public education still often hinges on the ZIP code a child lives in, skin color and the size of the family’s bank account.

Parents in struggling communities across the country are going to extraordinary lengths to try to get their children into great public schools. There is even a trend of children’s guardians using fake addresses to enroll them in better schools in nearby neighborhoods or towns — living in fear of hired investigators who follow children home to verify their addresses.

While millions of families are struggling with this system, we have Republicans in Congress, the White House and state legislatures across the country making problems worse, undermining public education and attacking public-school teachers.

So it is largely up to Democrats — especially those of us in this presidential primary race — to have a better discussion about practical K-12 solutions to ensure that every child in our country can go to a great public school. That discussion needs to include high-achieving public charter schools when local communities call for them.

Many public charter schools have proved to be an effective, targeted tool to give children with few other options a chance to succeed.

For-profit charter school schemes and the anti-public education agenda of President Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos are hurting teachers, students and their families. Of course, we must fight back against these misguided and harmful forces. But we shouldn’t let the worst actors distort this crucial debate, as they have in recent years.

The treatment by many Democratic politicians of high-performing public charter schools as boogeymen has undermined the fact that many of these schools are serving low-income urban children across the country in ways that are inclusive, equitable, publicly accountable and locally driven.

When I was mayor of Newark, we invested in both traditional public schools and high-performing public charter schools. Following our efforts, the citywide graduation rate rose to 77 percent in 2018 from just above 50 percent a decade ago. Today, Newark is ranked the No. 1 city in America for “beat the odds” high-poverty, high-performance schools by the Center on Reinventing Public Education.

We refused to accept the false choice between supporting public-school teachers and giving parents options for their kids when they had none, and the city worked with our local teacher’s union to give our public school teachers a raise too. And we didn’t just blindly invest in good public charter schools, Newark closed bad ones too.

As Democrats, we can’t continue to fall into the trap of dismissing good ideas because they don’t fit into neat ideological boxes or don’t personally affect some of the louder, more privileged voices in the party. These are not abstract issues for many low-to-middle-income families, and we should have a stronger sense of urgency, and a more courageous empathy, about their plight.

Especially at this moment of crisis for our country, we must be the party of real solutions, not one that threatens schools that work for millions of families who previously lacked good educational options.

As a party, we need to take a holistic approach to improving outcomes for children who are underserved and historically disadvantaged. That must mean significantly increasing funding for public schools, raising teacher pay, fully funding the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act, investing in universal preschool, eliminating child poverty — and yes, supporting high-performing public charter schools if and when they are the right fit for a community, are equitable and inclusive, and play by the same rules as other public schools.

As a coalition, we have to acknowledge that our goals for federal education funding will continue to face serious political opposition. Supporting well-regulated public charters, in the meantime, is a meaningful complementary solution. The promise of better schools some day down the road doesn’t do much for children who have to go to schools that fail them today.

The Democratic Party is at its best when we lead with the conviction, above all else, to help people. We fall short of that when we race to embrace poll-tested positions that may help us avoid being yelled at on the internet by an unrepresentative few but don’t reflect the impossible choices many low-income families face.

Our primary litmus test for supporting a policy should be whether it is a good idea that, responsibly implemented, can help those who need it. We must be the party that empowers people and stands with them, not against them for convenient political gain. That’s not just the way we will win. It’s the best way to govern.

Cory A. Booker is a Democratic senator from New Jersey and a presidential candidate.

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Who Suffers by Limiting Charter Schools?

Editor’s Note: We wanted to share this story on charter schools by John Stossel and Maxim Lott that was posted here by Reason on September 10, 2019.

He shares the heartbreak of parents who wait year after year to see if their children have been selected for the charter school lotteries, and the disappointment that follows when they’re not.

They are frustrated with their local underperforming public schools but have little choice and few alternative educational opportunities for their children because the government is limiting charter schools, even though charters often do better than government-run schools with less funding.

When charter schools fail, they close. When traditional public schools fail, they stay open. There are an estimated five million students who would attend a charter school if they had the option.

Let Charter Schools Teach!

Many parents try to escape government-run schools for less-regulated “charter schools.”

Philadelphia mom Elaine Wells tells John Stossel that she wanted to get her boys into a charter because her local government-run school in inner-city Philadelphia was “horrible…there were fights after school every day.”

Her kids spent years losing lotteries that they hoped would get them into a charter.

“It’s heartbreaking,” Wells says.

In Philadelphia, thanks to government limits, only 7,000 kids get into charters. 29,000 apply.

But eventually, Wells got her kids into a new charter school: Boys’ Latin, founded by David Hardy.

Boys’ Latin does many unusual things. All kids learn Latin, wear uniforms, and stay longer hours—and it’s all-boys.

“The rules are there to set the stage for the students,” Hardy tells Stossel. “If the teacher can tell you to tuck in your shirt, they can tell you to be quiet in class…tell you to do your homework.”

Wells says that worked for her kids. “Before Boys Latin I would come home and say, ‘OK, I need you to read for an hour—read a book.’ And their response would be, ‘Why? What did we do?’ Like reading was a punishment! [After] Boys’ Latin…I would find books in the bathroom on the floor!”

Her son Ibrahim adds, “It came to the point where the teacher would tell our mom that I’d taken too many books.”

The school was better at hiring teachers who tried hard.

Wells recalls being shocked to find her sons talking to teachers at night: “He’s in his room and I hear him talking on the phone and it was 10 o’clock at night. I’m like, ‘Who are you on the phone with?’ and he was like, ‘Well, Mr. Bumbulsky told me to call him if I needed help with homework.'”

Stossel pushed back at some of David Hardy’s ideas, like making every student take four years of Latin. “It’s ridiculous. Nobody speaks Latin,” Stossel suggests to founder David Hardy.

“Well we picked Latin because it was hard,” Hardy replies.

“What’s the point of that?” Stossel asks.

“Because life is hard—to be prepared you have to work hard,” Hardy says. “We wanted to get that into the psyche of our students.”

Overall, Boys’ Latin gets somewhat better test scores than surrounding schools in most subjects.

“We deliver,” Hardy says. “Since the very first class we’ve sent more black boys to college than any high school in Pennsylvania.”

Despite that, government officials rejected his proposal to open a “Girls’ Latin” school. They’ve rejected a bunch of schools.
Opponents complain that charters “drain scarce resources” from government-run schools.

“You can’t tell me that,” Wells responds. “Every parent pays taxes…if I choose for my child to go to a charter school, then that’s where my taxes should go!”

In fact, Philadelphia and other cities don’t give charters the same amount of money they give to schools they control. Philadelphia gives them only 70 percent of that. So per student, Stossel notes, the government schools make money whenever a kid leaves for a charter. Over 13 years of schooling, Philadelphia saves $70,000 per kid.

Stossel asks Wells: What if those savings were passed onto the child?

“Absolutely! Give them the rest of the money!” Wells laughs.

But it won’t happen because, as Hardy notes, “It would also mean that there would be a whole lot less union jobs. The unions are not going to be for that.”

The views expressed in this video are solely those of John Stossel; his independent production company, Stossel Productions; and the people he interviews. The claims and opinions set forth in the video and accompanying text are not necessarily those of Reason.

Diversity in America’s Traditional Public and Public Charter School Leaders

Editor’s Note: This article about diversity among public school leaders including public charter school leaders, was originally published here on September 9, 2019 by The 74 and written by Laura Fay.

As Schools Diversify, Principals Remain Mostly White — and 5 Other Things We Learned This Summer About America’s School Leaders

Source: National Center for Education Statistics

This is the latest article in The 74’s ongoing ‘Big Picture’ series, bringing American education into sharper focus through new research and data. Go Deeper: See our full series.

Reports released this summer offer new insight into America’s school principals, from their racial diversity to how turnover affects student achievement.

The new papers add to a growing body of research about principals but also raise new questions, said Brendan Bartanen, an assistant professor at Texas A&M University and co-author of recent reports on principal diversity and principal turnover.

“We know that principals matter,” Bartanen told The 74. “We still don’t have a great understanding of the specifics of that — how do they matter, what are the specific things that they do, what are the ways that we could train them better and provide them better development?”

Amid growing concern about teacher diversity — America’s teachers are about 80 percent white — Bartanen’s research shows that black principals are more likely to hire black teachers to work in their schools. Having just one black teacher in elementary school can improve a number of outcomes for black students. But federal data show that principals are overwhelmingly white.

Here are six things we learned about America’s principals this summer.

1. Principals are overwhelmingly white, despite increasingly diverse students.

Although more than half of U.S. students are racial minorities, about 78 percent of public school principals are white, according to 2017-18 survey data collected by the National Center for Education Statistics and released in August. That mirrors the makeup of the American teaching corps, which is about 80 percent white.

The remaining principals were about 8.9 percent Hispanic, 10.5 percent black and 2.9 percent other races. Urban districts were more likely to have principals of color than their rural, town and suburban counterparts.

Most nonwhite principals were in high-poverty schools. At schools where 75 percent or more of students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunches, almost 60 percent of teachers were white while 16.5 percent were Hispanic and 21 percent were black, the NCES data show. (NCES did not break down responses in the “other” category, which includes American Indian/Alaska Native, Asian, Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander, and two or more races.)

2. Charter school leadership was slightly more diverse than principals in traditional public schools.

In charter schools, 66.5 percent of principals were white, while 12.3 percent were Hispanic and 16.3 percent were black, according to the NCES numbers.

A recent study by the Fordham Institute found that charters also tend to employ more black teachers than district schools do.

3. Black principals are more likely to hire and retain black teachers.

When a school gains a black principal, black teachers are more likely to be hired and retained, according to a working paper written by Bartanen and Jason A. Grissom of Vanderbilt University and released in May by the Annenberg Institute at Brown University.

Schools that changed from a white to a black principal saw an average increase in black teachers of about 3 percentage points because black teachers were more likely to be hired and to stay in their positions.

Bartanen and Grissom used teacher data from Missouri and Tennessee, where there was not enough information to gauge the effects of switching from white to Latino principals. The working paper has not been peer-reviewed and is subject to change.

4. Most principals say their training left them well prepared.

A report released by RAND used survey data to look at teachers’ attitudes about their preparation programs.

Overall, principals reported that their training prepared them well to lead a school, with more than 80 percent responding that they could see a connection between their coursework and practice as school leaders.

Additionally, the RAND researchers found a positive relationship between the amount of field experience educators had and how they rated their training programs. Both teachers and principals who had more field experience reported feeling more prepared for their work in schools.

5. But 39 percent of white principals say they were not well prepared to support black, Latino and low-income students.

When asked whether their preservice training prepared them to support black, Latino and low-income students, 62 percent of white principals agreed, compared with 76 percent of nonwhite principals, according to the RAND report. The leaves about 2 in 5 white principals who said they were “mostly” or “completely” unprepared to work with poor and minority students.

There was a similar gap among teachers.

6. Principal turnover tends to hurt student achievement — but not always.

The average rate of principal turnover is around 18 percent, according to NCES data. The schools principals left typically saw declines in math and reading scores, but the reason for the leadership change affected the outcomes, according to a new report published in June in Education Evaluation and Policy Analysis. For example, in cases in which the principal was demoted, student achievement stayed the same or improved. Meanwhile, students whose principals moved to other schools or to district-level positions saw a decrease in their math and reading scores.

The takeaway is that districts should be strategic about retaining strong principals but not afraid to remove low-performing ones, said Bartanen, who wrote the paper with Grissom and Laura K. Rogers.

Disclosure: The Carnegie Corporation of New York, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Walton Family Foundation and Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation support both RAND and The 74.

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Charter School Parents Are More Satisfied With Schools

Editor’s Note: This date for this article on charter school parent satisfaction was taken from the National Center for Education Statistics’ Parent and Family Involvement surveys. It was originally published here on August 20, 2019 by Education Dive and was written by Linda Jacobson.

Charter parents express greater satisfaction with schools

Dive Brief:

Charter school parents are more likely than parents in traditional district schools to report volunteering and attending parent-teacher conferences or parent group meetings. But overall, there are no significant differences between charter and district parents in participating in general meetings, committees, fundraising and guidance counselor activities, according to an article in the American Educational Research Journal.
The study, which uses data from the National Center for Education Statistics’ Parent and Family Involvement surveys, also shows charter parents report significantly higher levels of satisfaction. But as the charter sector grew between 2007 and 2016, there was also an “uptick” in satisfaction among district parents and a downward trend among charter parents.
The study’s author, Zachary Oberfield of Haverford College in Pennsylvania, suggests parent volunteering contracts, sometimes in place at charter schools, could be one reason these parents report more volunteering. In addition, the differences in satisfaction levels, he said, could “result from steps that charter schools are taking to ensure that parents and children are having positive schooling experiences.”

Dive Insight:

While the study adds another layer to the many ways researchers are comparing traditional and charter schools, Oberfield also addresses what he calls a charter school debate that “often devolves into caricature and hardline position taking,” noting the research overall on whether charter schools are different or better than traditional schools is mixed.

“As these results accumulate, perhaps they can encourage policymakers and stakeholders to ratchet down the rhetoric and engage in more generative conversations,” he wrote. “In doing so, we can deepen our understanding of how charter and district schools compare and what they can learn from one another.”

Digging into the satisfaction data, for example, he found parents whose children attended district schools outside of their geographically assigned school had higher levels of satisfaction than those who attended assigned schools. Perhaps, he wrote, exercising some choice — whether it’s a charter or district school — “conditions a positive feeling.”

In a Q&A about a book on charters he published last year, he also noted “a fire has been lit under public school administrators” in traditional schools, and many are working harder to attract families and provide unique opportunities for students.

Oberfield adds that a future area of research — and comparison — should explore parents’ experiences with school leaders and teachers. “Future work could contribute by comparing how district and charter parents experience the teachers and leaders who run their child’s school and how this is connected to their engagement and satisfaction,” he wrote.

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How and Why New Orleans is the First Major American City with Only Charter Schools

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published here on July 1, 2019, by the New Orleans Lens and was written by Marta Jewson who covers education in New Orleans for The Lens.

New Orleans becomes first major American city without traditional schools

On a typically hot July 1 in south Louisiana, when many students and educators are enjoying long holiday vacations, New Orleans has quietly become the first major American city without any traditional schools.

The Orleans Parish school district has teetered on the edge of an all-charter district for years. Each year the number of the district’s direct-run schools has dwindled as some have closed and others have converted or been taken over by charter organizations. During the 2018-2019 school year, the district ran just three schools directly, and that was only after unexpectedly taking control of two struggling charter schools.

The last school to convert, McDonogh 35 Senior High School, is doing so as part of a two-part plan to shut down the traditional school and restart it as a charter. The historic school needed a reset after years of declining scores, Superintendent Henderson Lewis Jr. said last year when he announced the changes.

“My goal is to bring McDonogh 35 back into its premiere position as an academically successful, first-tier high school and this is the best step forward,” Lewis said in December.

Each of the last three years, the district has been poised to become all-charter, but each time, charter groups have withdrawn applications to run schools, or district officials have decided to change course. The district wound up waiting an extra year to hand McDonogh 35 over to a nonprofit.

That group, InspireNOLA, has grown with a wave of charter operators that followed the state’s post-Katrina intervention in New Orleans’ public schools.

Charter schools in New Orleans are run by nonprofit groups that receive a contract from either the state or the district. In exchange for the ability to select curriculum, staff and set their own calendars, they must meet certain academic and financial standards each year. Charter schools receive a 5-year contract and if they pass an initial review after three years they are able to apply for a renewal. Renewal contracts can last anywhere between three and 10-years depending on the school’s performance.

The state-run Recovery School District took over dozens of the city’s schools in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, eventually closing or converting all of them to charter schools. Louisiana’s first charter school law was passed in 1995, but there were only a handful of charters in New Orleans before the storm.

July 1 is important for the school district. It’s the day charter school contracts begin and also marks the start of the fiscal year. One year ago, the city’s RSD charters all transferred back to the local school district’s oversight. That nearly doubled the size of the district.

Last year, the district was on track to have only one traditional school: McDonogh 35. But it ended up taking over two struggling elementary charter schools and running them directly instead.

In May 2018, Cypress Academy’s former governing nonprofit board abruptly announced that the school would not reopen for the 2018-2019 school year. The district took over the school — which served a large number of special education students — to avoid the sudden closure. Initially, Lewis said the district would manage Cypress for two years, but in November, he announced that Cypress would be closed and its students transferred to Foundation Preparatory after the school year ended.

Another charter, Edgar P. Harney Spirit of Excellence Academy, had myriad financial irregularities and was found to have been providing inadequate special education services. The district forced it to surrender its charter, taking it over in January. Harney also closed after the end of the 2018-2019 school year.

District officials say they are focusing on replicating highly rated schools to create more seats for students. The majority of D and F-rated schools in Orleans Parish during the 2018-19 school year were ones that returned from the Recovery School District. Lewis closed four of them, but only the ones that were up for contract renewal.

Education reform advocates have claimed success as test scores and graduation rates have risen. But other groups remain skeptical, noting exams and the state’s grading formula have changed often and that holding charters accountable appears to be an ongoing challenge for the Orleans Parish school district. In addition, schools no longer have a large district to rely on for costly services. That has driven more money to administration and away from the classroom, according to one study.

In its heavily decentralized system, the school district created a number of new positions last summer to monitor charter schools and started tracking the smallest of legal requirements that affect the public, such as boards that fail to post their board meeting minutes online. The district also began telling families at charter schools when their schools will be up for contract renewals — a make-or-break year that can result in school closures.

The district-created “Charter School Framework that was designed to equip OPSB with the foundational tools to hold schools accountable annually and at the point of renewal,” said a statement, attributed to the Orleans Parish School Board, that the district provided to The Lens on Monday.

Asked about the move to an all-charter city, Nahliah Webber, the executive director of the Orleans Parish Education Network, said she doesn’t expect much to change. OPEN is a nonprofit that advocates for inclusive, transparent, and community-aligned public policy.

“We’ve kind of been operating under the understanding that it was already an all-charter system,” she said.

Advocates like Webber worry about the district’s ability to hold the nearly three dozen independent nonprofit organizations that run the city’s roughly 75 schools accountable. Those concerns are especially heightened in light of the recent grade-fixing scandal at John F. Kennedy High School. The problem, first reported by The Lens in March, led to a review of senior transcripts, uncovering problems that went well beyond grade inflation. A close examination of student records revealed 92 of 177 seniors were not eligible for graduation. Most of the ineligible students didn’t learn that until a month after walking at their commencement ceremony.

“Our biggest concern is that we can’t have reactive accountability,” Webber said, after mentioning Kennedy’s seniors, some of whom are now in summer school. “We can’t wait until half the students of a graduating class are found to be ineligible for graduation before OPSB steps in.”

In response to the findings, Lewis called for the state Inspector General’s Office to open a criminal investigation into Kennedy. He’s also ordered an audit of all high school students’ records citywide. It’s a tall order but one he said was necessary to ensure what happened at Kennedy doesn’t happen again.

Lewis’ office appears to be adding more staff to focus on accountability, according to a district statement issued Monday.
“OPSB is continually assessing how best to strengthen and improve its oversight of schools,” an emailed statement from the board said. “Given that, we have identified the need for additional capacity and expertise on our accountability team along with new on-going oversight tools, like we will implement on our annual site visits this fall for high schools.”

The last traditional school

McDonogh 35, the first public high school for African-Americans in New Orleans, was highly regarded for decades. Its list of alumni includes Ernest “Dutch” Morial, the city’s first black mayor, and former New Orleans Police Department Chief Michael Harrison. But the school’s state standardized test scores have been on the decline for years, which Lewis said was a major part of his decision.

The district tried and failed for years to charter McDonogh 35. When those efforts were unsuccessful, and as the school’s academic performance slumped, it decided to phase out the school and restart it. This year, the high school didn’t have new ninth grade students. But the only contractor who qualified to close out the school had problems of its own. So the district opted to run the school for the 2018-19 school year.

Over the last school year, the district awarded charter group InspireNOLA two contracts related to the school. The first was a contract to see McDonogh 35’s older students through graduation. The second, a charter contract, allows the group to start a ninth grade academy this fall. It will add one grade each year until it’s a full high school.

With the official move to an all-charter model, Webber said she’s concerned the system is “digging in its heels.”

“The model is not bearing out the promises that it made,” she said.

A 2018 report by The Education Research Alliance found that the switch to charter schools resulted in substantial improvements in student achievement, graduation rates and college entry. And polling by the Cowen Institute last year found that 60 percent of respondents said that charter schools have improved education in the city. And 55 percent said that the city’s “open enrollment model,” eliminating geographically based enrollment, has improved public education.
Still, Webber noted that a large number of the city’s schools are rated a D or F.

“You have been unshackled from the school in your neighborhood,” Webber said. “But what does that mean?”

She pointed to schools with poor ratings that are nearly all black or hispanic. Meanwhile, she said white students are often overrepresented at schools with better ratings.

“The ultimate choice is those who can chose out of the system altogether.”

In recent years, the district has taken a more hands-on approach to monitoring charters. Last year, it preemptively halted enrollment at four charters it did not think would be open this coming fall. Indeed they are all closed, a decision made by Lewis.

Webber said she hopes the district will change that enforcement model.

“You can’t close your way to a good school system,” she said.

When the district stepped in at Cypress Academy and forced Harney give up its charter midyear, it took over direct operations. A district statement said that has prepared them for future takeovers.

“Given our work this past year at Cypress Academy and Harney Elementary School, OPSB had gathered first-hand experience of what additional resources, policies, and staffing is needed if and when such a takeover is required,” a statement released by the district said.

Still, Webber thinks the district needs to be more proactive. If it sees a problem at one school, she thinks it should be examining similar schools for the same issue.

“It’s been really hard lately to see how the system is going to be able to sustain itself when we have a reactive accountability structure.”

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What Were Your Biggest Charter School Challenges in 2019?

This year, at the National Charter Schools Conference, we asked the visitors to our Charter School Capital booth one simple question…”What is the biggest challenge that charter schools face?”. We had 248 respondents from states all across the nation, and while not an enormous number to provide clear statistical significance, we did find the results interesting and thought you might too. In this post, we’re sharing the results of our survey with you.

Overall Highlights:

24% of respondents said that increasing or sustaining enrollment was a top challenge
19% said that retaining teachers was their biggest challenge
16% of respondents said that accessing/improving facilities was their top challenge

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Notable Highlights, State Specific:

More than 1/3 of our California respondents said increasing or sustaining enrollment was their greatest challenge
In Michigan, retaining teachers was the leading challenge by a wide margin (20 of 31 respondents)
The leading challenge in Florida, according to our respondents was accessing/improving facilities
More than half of the Texas respondents shared that increasing or sustaining enrollment was their greatest challenge. (11 of 18)

Note: Other state responses were spread across the categories with no notable leader and were therefore not called out here.

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Since the company’s inception in 2007, Charter School Capital has been committed to the success of charter schools. We help schools access, leverage, and sustain the resources charter schools need to thrive, allowing them to focus on what matters most – educating students. Our extensive toolbox of innovative and customizable solutions are designed exclusively for charter schools. This wide range of products and services has been developed to address the diverse set of challenges charter leaders face Our depth of experience working with charter school leaders and our knowledge of how to address charter school financial and operational needs have allowed us to provide over $2 billion in support of 600 charter schools that have educated over 1,027,000 students across the country. For more information on how we can support your charter school, contact us. We’d love to work with you!

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