A few days ago I posted about charter school legislation in the state of Washington being ruled unconstitutional and the fact that language in their bill and the one passed in Alabama earlier this year have similar language in how a state charter school commission should be set up. (This was also picked up by AL.com and a number of newspapers.)
I soon received an email from a former state legislator who was appointed to the Alabama Public Charter School Commission. (Are there private charter schools?) He disagreed with some of what I said. Which is fine as I welcome other views.
I replied with a lengthy email, complete with a link to an article and contacts for folks who know far more about charter schools than I do. No response in return.
My correspondent made no bones about supporting charter schools. He also implied that local school boards may become charter authorizers and control what happens in their communities.
(The fact he supports charters was hardly a surprise. All you have to do is look at his campaign financial records from 2014 to figure this out. He got $160,498 from Bob Riley’s Alabama 2014 PAC; $53,500 from the Business Council of Alabama’s Progress PAC and $13,500 from Speaker Mike Hubbard’s PAC. All three of these are major charter boosters. In addition, he also received $33,057 from the Alabama Federation for Children and $3,533 from StudentsFirst of Sacramento, CA, both of which tout charters. So in all, he got $264,088 from charter promoters.)
Here is the language from the bill concerning selection of this commission: Each member of the commission shall have demonstrated understanding of and COMMITMENT to charter schooling as a tool for strengthening public education and shall sign an agreement to hear the appeal and review documents in a fair and IMPARTIAL manner.
So how will commission members who are committed to supporting charters be impartial? I’m still scratching my head about that one.
As to local school boards becoming authorizers, here is more from the bill: To solicit, encourage, and guide the development of quality public charter school applications, every local school board, in its role as a public charter school authorizer, shall issue and broadly publicize a request for proposals for public charter school application…
In other words, you are not only an authorizer, you are a charter cheerleader. A superintendent of a large city system said to me, “Why do we want to spend time and limited resources encouraging competition?”
Besides if a local school system rejects a charter application, their decision will be appealed to the state commission, made up of charter supporters. And at this point, deciding not to waste time and money seems a prudent decision.
SPOT ON! AND AMEN and any other description…You hit the nail on the head!!
Charter schools are not “competition” to public schools. They are schools that have the liberty to provide a variety of learning experiences by using research proven strategies that are not being used in traditional schools. As all teachers know, our direction comes from our principals; theirs comes from the local board; theirs comes from the state board; theirs comes from lawmakers. Hmmmm, and where did lawmakers go to school to study education? How many education blogs, journals, books do they read to learn about new ways to keep up with the world? When was the last time a lawmaker was in a public school classroom? Maybe they dropped their child off at school that morning, or waved goodbye to them at the bus stop. Or wait was that a private school at which they were dropping their child off like many lawmakers we know (and don’t love).
Charters are not out to shut down public schools and take away teachers’ jobs. They are in fact public schools themselves, simply meant to encourage the professional growth of teaching, and to improve education as a whole. Think of them as lab schools whose job is to implement and try proven strategies along with new techniques to see if we can do better. And in public education, we can always do better.
Thanks for your comment, but I must respectively disagree. The charters you describe are what were conceived 20+ years ago when the idea was born. Not today with all the profit-centered management companies in the business.
http://interactive.sun-sentinel.com/charter-schools-unsupervised/investigation.html
This is a recent extensive look at Florida charters by the Orlando Sun-Sentinel. Hardly what we need in Alabama.
As to competition, charters are certainly competition. How do you run two school systems on the same funds you run one? If you cut a pie into 8 pieces instead of 6, everyone gets a smaller piece. If a charter school down the road gets money from the state that your public school was getting, does the power company cut your light bill accordingly?
And when kids from your public school and the charter begin fund-raising, do local business give twice as much or split their money between the two?
As to the lawmakers and their input, not sure I follow what you say. But I certainly agree that the great majority of lawmakers have no clue what education is all about or the challenges our teachers face these days. This is why they passed a charter school bill in Alabama that says teachers do not have to be certified. Why they passed the Alabama Accountability Act where kids can go to private schools that do not have to be accredited.
I don’t see your problem with this article. I completely agree with the proponents of charters. They are providing a high quality valid, successful option in public school choice for this district. Taxpayers are not funding the schools, private donations are. If we could see this happen in my lifetime in Baldwin County, we wouldn’t be pushing for a measly 4 mil tax to be put on the agenda for a vote in order to expand our classrooms to match our population boom. We also might get a raise, which has a better likelihood of happening with private donations that with public funding and the AEA at the helm.
“A recent spate of charter-school closings illustrates weaknesses in state law: virtually anyone can open or run a charter school and spend public education money with near impunity, a Sun Sentinel investigation found.”
Key words here are “weaknesses in state law”, which we see everyday in every area of law. Charter supporters don’t deny there can be problems. Anytime the government is involved there can be problems.
“South Florida is home to more than 260 charter schools, many of them high-performing. Some cater to students with interests in the performing arts, science and technology, or those with special needs.”
I’m sure it’s also home to many successful traditional schools but I don’t see any data on that subject. Maybe there aren’t.
“Fifteen charter schools in Broward have closed in the last two years. That number doubled the county’s total closures since charter schools first opened in Florida 18 years ago. Seven charter schools have closed in Palm Beach County in the last two years. That’s more than a quarter of the district’s historic total.
Eight of those failed schools lasted about a year or less. Five didn’t survive three months.”
I bet if we really looked hard at what changed during this time we would find a change in lawmakers that are milking the system. The same problems that happen in traditional schools can and do happen in charters. That doesn’t close down a traditional school though. I think it should.
“Because of the lack of guidelines, school officials in South Florida say, they do not conduct criminal screenings or examine candidates’ financial or educational pasts.”
Key words here are “lack of guidelines”.
This particular Florida situation sounds chaotic to say the least but it is certainly not representative of the charter network as a whole. Mr. Lee, you are certainly welcome to your opinion about charter schools, public schools, private schools and home schools but the bottom line is that Alabama needs school choice. We need accountability. Our students need innovative options. Teachers need to be able to make sound, professional decisions based on the make up of our classrooms and our communities and most of all we need raises. Charter schools and the boards that will govern them have at the very least sparked the discussions needed to move us in that direction and at the most will provide us with viable, world class learning opportunities for our students.
Thank you for your reporting on the state of education. Most don’t know and don’t care. At least two of us do.
Always appreciate your thoughts. However, you need to do some more homework and understand that charter schools in Alabama will definitely receive public funding. So we are gonna take a pie that is already too small and cut it into even more pieces. I just don’t see how anyone benefits from this?