The following post is from a retired teacher in Washington D.C.
They boost their standardized test scores and graduation rates by transferring unwanted students back to the real public school system or LEA.
Charter advocates, like the Walton & Gates Foundations, aim to break up public schools and replace them with a lots of charter schools, run by charter boards that report to an appointed authorizing body over which neither the public nor the state legislature has oversight authority.
They view the public the same way they view teachers’ due process rights: obstacles to arbitrary management control.
They are bipartisan or, more accurately, a faction within both major parties.
You will be voting on whether or not to authorize charter schools to operate in Washington State. I thought I would share some details about charter operations from our experience in Washington, DC, where charters already enroll over 40% of our public school students.
I am a retired Washington, DC public high school social studies teacher. This past year, I have been working with community groups to stop the mayor and DCPS chancellor from closing or transferring to charters 37 public schools. Charters already enroll over 40% of our public school students. .
Our public schools, especially our urban ones, desperately need improvement, but stigmatizing veteran teachers, stripping them of due process protections by giving control of the schools to self-promoters like Michelle Rhee or to charter operators has not improved our schools. For more than 20 years, as a teacher, I have exposed mismanagement, including falsification of students’ grades, social promotion and graduation, bullying of teachers, toleration of disorderly student behavior, and undermining academic integrity by putting unprepared students in advanced classes, creation of “credit recovery” shortcuts to receive graduation credits, while refusing to provide students with viable vocational options.
In this letter, I describe how charter promoters and authorizers inflate standardized test results and graduation rates and, just like Ballot Initiative I-1240 intends to do, established an appointed “DC Public Charter School Board” (like the proposed “Washington State Charter School Commission,” “independent” of public oversight, but possessing discretionary authority over public education and facilities funds. Finally, I appended excerpts from Ballot Initiative I-1240, followed by comments.
Charter Schools are Private Schools on the Public Dole.
Thurgood Marshall Public Charter School is a 4-year high school, located in Ward 8, Washington, DC’s poorest ward, and a favorite of the Walton Foundation and other foundations.
This school loses an average of 48.5 students in the 18 months between the grade 9 October enrollment audit and the April administration of the NCLB performance test, called DC CAS.
Over a five year period (2006-07 to 2010-11), all of the DC charter high schools dropped from their rolls an average of 730 students per cohort in the 18 months between the grade 9 enrollment audit and the grade 10 NCLB test, an annual average of 40% of their grade 9 enrollment.
Although publicly funded, charters act like private schools: They transfer students at any time.
Look at Thurgood Marshall’s (TM’s) grade 9 enrollment for 2007-08: 129 students. By grade 12, the number had declined to 50. TM reported 43 graduates to the DC Office of the State Superintendent of Education (DC OSSE) and a 75.44% graduation rate. According to that rate, TM had a grade 9 cohort of 57 students (43/57 = 75.44%). But there were 129 9th graders: What happened to 72 students? Why aren’t they reflected in the graduation rate?
They were transferred, most back to DCPS. How can they do that, if they are “public” schools?
By fiat, they are pronounced to be “public schools,” entitled to public funding, but only the traditional public school remains the school system “of right.” The local school district or LEA (Local Education Agency) remains the public school that every student has a right to attend (it’s called “school of right”). Charter schools are NOT schools “of right.” They can transfer students out at any time. The right to have the final say-so over who attends a school is the defining characteristic of a private school.
The strategy of the charters is to attract students by promising a safer and better academic environment. By self-selection, it attracts the more engaged parents. During the 9th grade year and early 10th grade year, the school determines which students it wants to keep and which ones will do poorly on the test and are in danger of dropping out.
Don’t students drop out of the regular public school? Certainly. When they drop out, they are still counted in the school’s cohort (denominator). A student can only be removed from the denominator/ cohort, if he or she is transferred to another school and enrolled. The regular public school has no equivalent “default” LEA into which it can unload unwanted students. Since charters are all in the same school zone as the regular public school, they can transfer at will.
After a student has been transferred to the LEA school of right, i.e. the “traditional” public school, he or she is removed from the cohort. The US Department of Education introduced the Adjusted Cohort Graduation Rate (ACJR) calculation with the graduating class of 2011. It starts with the grade 9 enrollment, students transferring in are added; those transferring out are subtracted from the cohort.
When there are multiple LEAs in the same geographical district, but only one is required to enroll all students, the other LEAs have the privilege of cherry picking and then getting rid of students who don’t fit in. That’s what they all do in DC, including much acclaimed KIPP.
The Grand Foundation Strategy: Shift Public Policy Functions to semi-private, “independent” commissions or bodies that are accountable to a single high official (mayor or governor) and removed from oversight by city councils or state legislatures.
On the Washington State Ballot Initiative I-1240, the WASHINGTON CHARTER SCHOOL COMMISSION is termed “an independent state agency,” whose 9 members are appointed 3 each by the Governor, House speaker, Senate president. This is a pseudo-democratic scheme. No commission members should be appointed without a public hearing before an elected body.
This would be a most unusual commission, whose members are not required to have a commitment to public education, but only to one questionable form of public education: “All members shall have demonstrated an understanding of and commitment to charter schooling as a strategy for strengthening public education.” That amounts to a de facto politicized requirement, a “charter test.” That only shows how bold and confident the charter advocates are.
NEW SECTION. Sec. 206. CHARTER SCHOOL STUDENTS.
(2)If a student who was previously enrolled in a charter school enrolls in another public school in the state, the student’s new school must accept credits earned by the student in the charter school in the same manner and according to the same criteria that credits are accepted from other public schools.
[[COMMENTS: What is to prevent a charter school from transferring a student after the October enrollment audit, that establishes school funding, but before the April administration of the state test that is used to meet NCLB/RTTT requirements?
(2) School district boards of directors that have been approved by the state board of education under section 209 of this act before authorizing a charter school, for charter schools located within the school district’s own boundaries.
NEW SECTION. Sec. 208. WASHINGTON CHARTER SCHOOL COMMISSION.
(2) The commission shall consist of nine members, no more than five of… the same political party. Three … appointed by the governor; three … by the president of the senate; and three … speaker of the house of representatives.
(3) Members appointed to the commission shall collectively possess strong experience and expertise in public and nonprofit governance; management and finance; public school leadership, assessment, curriculum, and instruction; and public education law. All members shall have demonstrated an understanding of and commitment to charter schooling as a strategy for strengthening public education.
[[COMMENT: This is the key to the chartering process and goals: Establishment of a publicly appointed body, that, for all intents and purposes, can operate like a private corporation, all but immune from public and stakeholder accountability.
NEW SECTION. Sec. 209. AUTHORIZERS–APPROVAL. (1) The state board of education shall establish an annual application and approval process and timelines for entities seeking approval to be charter school authorizers. The initial process and timelines must be established no later than ninety days after the effective date of this section.
[[COMMENT: Each charter authorizer can have a different set of criteria for a charter contract, oversight and evaluation? By what set of standards will the state department of education oversee these different charter authorizers?