Monday, March 2, 2015
10th Period: National Charter School Advocates: Ohio's the Wors...
10th Period: National Charter School Advocates: Ohio's the Wors...: For years now, I've been saying Ohio is unique among the 50 states for its crazy charter school system. And last week, many prominent ch...
Ohio Charters ridiculed. At least we are not Nevada
http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2015/03/ohios_charter_schools_ridicule.html#incart_m-rpt-1
Saturday, February 28, 2015
More analysis on charters from Minnesota
Students in most Minnesota charter schools are failing to hit learning targets and are not achieving adequate academic growth, according to a Star Tribune analysis of school performance data.
The analysis of 128 of the state’s 157 charter schools show that the gulf between the academic success of its white and minority students widened at nearly two-thirds of those schools last year. Slightly more than half of charter schools students were proficient in reading, dramatically worse than traditional public schools, where 72 percent were proficient.
Between 2011 and 2014, 20 charter schools failed every year to meet the state’s expectations for academic growth each year, signaling that some of Minnesota’s most vulnerable students had stagnated academically.
A top official with the Minnesota Department of Education says she is troubled by the data, which runs counter to “the public narrative” that charter schools are generally superior to public schools.
More than half of schools analyzed from 2011 to 2014 were also failing to meet the department’s expectations for academic growth, the gains made from year to year in reading and math.
Of the 20 schools that failed to meet the state goals for improvement every year, Pillsbury United Communities is the authorizer for six of those schools: Dugsi Academy, LoveWorks Academy for Visual and Performing Arts, Connections Academy, Learning for Leadership Charter School, and the Minnesota Transitions Charter School’s elementary, Connections Academy and Virtual High School. Those schools also missed annual achievement gap targets.
Sunday, February 22, 2015
Interesting article on Pearson
The company’s global adjusted operating profit for 2013 topped $1 billion — and 55 percent of it came from the North American education division.
“The line between profit and profiteering can seem pretty fuzzy,” said Cathy Davidson, director of the Futures Initiative and a professor at the Graduate Center at the City University of New York. “If you have an exclusive contract with a massive educational system, is that really just earning a profit, or are you profiting at the public’s expense?” Davidson said. “That’s the line many people, including myself, find very troubling.”
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/02/pearson-education-115026_Page2.html#ixzz3SWpZPsoT
Tuesday, February 17, 2015
Chapter superintendents, not so super
From Denis Smith
Seriously? No wonder the results are often horrible. Only the best and brightest (or not)?
Set up your own board and get yourself elected superintendent. Title sounds good and the pay is whatever you can convince the board to pay you. Ohio has probably doubled the number of superintendent positions with the advent of charter schools.
Seriously? No wonder the results are often horrible. Only the best and brightest (or not)?
Set up your own board and get yourself elected superintendent. Title sounds good and the pay is whatever you can convince the board to pay you. Ohio has probably doubled the number of superintendent positions with the advent of charter schools.
"How then is it that when it comes to the subject of “public” charter schools, Kasich and his friends have different definitions and understandings for terms like educators and superintendents?
Under Ohio law, there are no education or professional requirements for an individual to serve as a public charter school superintendent or principal. None. As Woody Allen might have put it, if 80% of success in life is just showing up, you’ve got a good chance of becoming the top administrator of a charter school just by showing up, with a new start-up school proposal in hand, at the offices of a charter school sponsor.
And yes, governor, let’s say it again: there are absolutely no administrative licensure requirements in charterdom. You don’t even have to be an educator in order to open and become a superintendent of a “public” charter school."
Thursday, February 12, 2015
Thursday, January 22, 2015
The wild west produces a judgment
Solution: Eliminate the middle man. Keep all of the rent! Open a virtual school. (It works, see K-12, Ohio Connections or ECOT)
Columbus Dispatch is getting on board.
$1 million judgment against charter school operator
The Columbus Dispatch - January 21, 2015 01:00 PM
A federal judge in Missouri ordered Imagine Schools, one of the nation’s largest charter-school operators, to pay nearly $1 million for forcing a lucrative lease agreement on a school it operated.
Under the complex deal, Imagine Schools negotiated the pricey lease with SchoolHouse Finance and presented it to the school board of the Renaissance Academy for Math and Science for approval. Imagine Schools owns SchoolHouse Finance and directly benefited by the agreement.
“This clearly constituted self-dealing,” U.S. District Judge Judge Nanette K. Laughrey wrote in a blistering 29-page ruling.
Sound familiar? The Dispatch in October reported about a North Side charter school spending more than half of the tax dollars it receives on rent in a very similar lease deal with Imagine Schools and SchoolHouse Finance. The board of the Imagine Columbus Primary Academy asked Imagine to renegotiate the lease but that has not happened.
Other Ohio charter-school operators use similar lease deals, and while apparently legal, supporters and opponents complained that they wasted tax dollars and lawmakers pledged to take a look.
"Legislators who are working on charter school reforms should make prevention of these types of abuses a top priority," said ProgressOhio Executive Director Sandy Theis.
Charter schools are privately operated with public tax dollars and many contract with management companies to handle day-to-day operations.
ProgressOhio recommended placing a cap on state money used for rent, requiring the Ohio Board of Education to sign-off on leases, requring charter-school boards to have independent attorneys and financial officers and other changes.
In the Missouri case, the school board of the now-closed Kansas City school sued its former management company, claiming it had manipulated the board and failed to act in the school’s best interest. “While the Renaissance Board theoretically had authority to act independently on some limited issues, it was in fact a captive of Imagine Schools by both design and by operation,” Laughrey wrote. “While this changed over time with the assistance of the sponsor, the University of Missouri, intervention came too late to save the school, which operated consistently with too few expenditures for instruction and low student performance.”
Laughrey found no evidence that Imagine Schools discussed the market rate for similar leases with the Renaissance board or informed members that SchoolHouse calculated the rental rate based on a 12 percent return on investment regardless of the market rate. They also neglected to mention that the higher-than average rent would result in lower-than average expenditures on books, supplies and teacher salaries.
“For example, in 2007-2008, Renaissance spent 27.9 percent of its funds on instructional costs while the national average was 65.8 percent and Missouri was 64.6 percent,” the judge noted.
Laughrey also had some interesting findings about how Imagine gets board members to go along with these not-so-sweet deals. Imagine recruited inexperienced school board members and one who had received political contributions from the companies and had family members working there.
Under the complex deal, Imagine Schools negotiated the pricey lease with SchoolHouse Finance and presented it to the school board of the Renaissance Academy for Math and Science for approval. Imagine Schools owns SchoolHouse Finance and directly benefited by the agreement.
“This clearly constituted self-dealing,” U.S. District Judge Judge Nanette K. Laughrey wrote in a blistering 29-page ruling.
Sound familiar? The Dispatch in October reported about a North Side charter school spending more than half of the tax dollars it receives on rent in a very similar lease deal with Imagine Schools and SchoolHouse Finance. The board of the Imagine Columbus Primary Academy asked Imagine to renegotiate the lease but that has not happened.
Other Ohio charter-school operators use similar lease deals, and while apparently legal, supporters and opponents complained that they wasted tax dollars and lawmakers pledged to take a look.
"Legislators who are working on charter school reforms should make prevention of these types of abuses a top priority," said ProgressOhio Executive Director Sandy Theis.
Charter schools are privately operated with public tax dollars and many contract with management companies to handle day-to-day operations.
ProgressOhio recommended placing a cap on state money used for rent, requiring the Ohio Board of Education to sign-off on leases, requring charter-school boards to have independent attorneys and financial officers and other changes.
In the Missouri case, the school board of the now-closed Kansas City school sued its former management company, claiming it had manipulated the board and failed to act in the school’s best interest. “While the Renaissance Board theoretically had authority to act independently on some limited issues, it was in fact a captive of Imagine Schools by both design and by operation,” Laughrey wrote. “While this changed over time with the assistance of the sponsor, the University of Missouri, intervention came too late to save the school, which operated consistently with too few expenditures for instruction and low student performance.”
Laughrey found no evidence that Imagine Schools discussed the market rate for similar leases with the Renaissance board or informed members that SchoolHouse calculated the rental rate based on a 12 percent return on investment regardless of the market rate. They also neglected to mention that the higher-than average rent would result in lower-than average expenditures on books, supplies and teacher salaries.
“For example, in 2007-2008, Renaissance spent 27.9 percent of its funds on instructional costs while the national average was 65.8 percent and Missouri was 64.6 percent,” the judge noted.
Laughrey also had some interesting findings about how Imagine gets board members to go along with these not-so-sweet deals. Imagine recruited inexperienced school board members and one who had received political contributions from the companies and had family members working there.
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