On average, the funding gap between charter schools and traditional schools is 22 percent, or $1,800 per pupil. The average charter school ends up with a total funding shortfall of nearly half a million dollars.
Source: Charter School Funding: Inequity’s Next Frontier
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Note: Please be aware that online publishers often change URLs or no longer provide access to articles after 7 days. If any of the below links no longer work, access the publishing newspaper and search the archives for the keywords in the subject matter. Good luck.
Washington Post Profiles New Orleans' Public Charter School Experience
New Orleans is the nation's first major city in which more than half of all public school students attend public charter schools. Before Hurricane Katrina ravaged the city, public charters had about two percent of the city's 67,000 public students. Charter leaders acknowledge that their schools must produce achievement gains or the public charter experiment will fail. Before Katrina, New Orleans typically ranked near the bottom nationally in reading and math scores. This spring, however, results from the Louisiana Educational Assessment Program tests show modest gains for schools. The KIPP Believe College Prep and KIPP McDonogh 15 School for the Creative Arts more than tripled math scores and more than doubled reading scores of their fifth-graders last year, according to KIPP's data. "The main difference is that most of the charters have the freedom to change, to get better, to hire the people they need to make the school better," said Jonathan Bertsch, KIPP's director of operations in New Orleans.
Source: Washington Post (free registration required), (06/09/2008)
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Education Leaders Debate Closures of Poor-Performing Public Charters
Shutting down poor performing public charter schools has become a lively part of the national debate over charter schools, according to the Washington Post. "You can sense there is a battle for the heart and soul of the charter movement, with some players focused keenly on quality while others are still more concerned with market share and breaking the monopoly of public education," said Ross Wiener of the Education Trust, which promotes better education for disadvantaged children. "I think the national organizations and some of the stronger state organizations are moving in the direction of making quality the top priority, but there's still a large faction that thinks charters are better than traditional schools and should be protected." Public charter critics say that all public charters drain resources for regular schools and that poorly performing public charters often remain open long after data show they are not succeeding. Public charter school advocates say public charters receive much closer scrutiny than most regular schools. Still, some public charter school supporters say the failure to close more schools is a problem. Andrew Rotherham, co-director of the Washington think tank Education Sector, said the National Association of Charter School Authorizers has found a useful technique: improve the methods of the authorizing boards that decide when and how to close failing public charter schools.
Source: Washington Post (free registration required), (06/08/2008)
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D.C. Bill Curbing Public Charter School Growth is Criticized
Nearly one in three students are enrolled in public charter schools in the District of Columbia. They are increasingly popular and often have long wait lists. A bill sponsored by D.C. Council Chairman Vincent Gray and council member Tommy Wells is designed to curb the rate of growth of the city's public charter schools. Provisions include a mandated 15-month planning period before a school can open, limiting new schools to one campus and a change in funding. The proposal was developed without any input from the D.C. Public Charter School Board and many observers see it as an action to undermine public charter schools and their autonomy. A Washington Post editorial highlights: "What's forgotten is that these children -- no matter if they go to charters or public schools -- are the educational responsibility of the District of Columbia. It is not a question of the charters siphoning money from District coffers but of parents deciding where they think their children will get the best schooling."
Source: Washington Post (free registration required), (06/08/2008)
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LAUSD Violating Public Charter School Law, Triggering Protests by Thousands of Parents and Teachers
Public charter school advocates in Los Angeles say that the district is violating the provisions of Proposition 39, a measure passed in 2000 that requires school districts to provide space for public charters. Last week Senior Deputy Supt. Ramon Cortines wrote a memo reaffirming a decision to deny space in district schools to seven public charter schools, claiming shared space would hamper the traditional schools' ability to function. According to Caprice Young, a former L.A. school board president who is now head of the California Charter Schools Association, public charter operators organized a march of several thousand public charter school families and faculty because "the only way to be heard at the L.A. Unified School District is with a stampede or a lawsuit." Interviewed later, Cortines said that he disagreed with Young on some specifics, such as the right of the seven schools to space on district campuses, but that he agreed with her point that public charter schools deserved equity. "I don't see them as charter school students or L.A. Unified students; I see them as students of Los Angeles, and we need to make sure that there is proper, adequate space for the education of all the students," he said. California's public charter school community also is launching a new organization, Families That Can, which is designed to organize the families of the 240,000 students who attend public charter schools statewide. More than 100 public charter schools representing tens of thousands of students in the state have already joined the movement.
Source: LA Times (free registration required), (06/07/2008)
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Presidential Candidates Support Public Charter Schools
Last week, two top education advisers to Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama and his Republican rival John McCain took part in an event sponsored by the Association of Educational Publishers. Representing the candidates were Jeanne Century, Director of Science Education, University of Chicago (Senator Obama) and Lisa Graham Keegan, former Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction and former state legislator who championed Arizona's public charter school legislation (Senator McCain). The advisors both said their candidate supports public charter schools. The session was co-sponsored by Ed in '08, a non-profit, non-partisan group that is working to get public education mentioned more often in the 2008 election. Both women lamented the lack of a substantial education debate so far. "Senator Obama is speaking about education," said Century. "Why people aren't hearing it, why it's not getting picked up, I don't know."
Source: USA Today, (06/06/2008)
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Delaware Senate Resolution Calls for Moratorium on New Public Charter Schools
A Senate resolution introduced on June 4 calls for a moratorium on new public charter school applications in Delaware during the 2008-09 school year. Senator Patricia Blevins, chief sponsor of the resolution, says the state Department of Education requested the legislation to allow it to give charter school supporters and the state teachers union an opportunity to discuss issues such as accountability and financing of public charter schools. "Nobody's picking on them," said Blevins, adding that she is willing to keep the bill tabled if officials with the Delaware Charter Schools Network offer any strong objection. According to the resolution, a hiring freeze prompted by state budget problems could affect the ability of state and local school administrators to adequately review new public charter school applications. The resolution also notes that Delaware will have a new governor in January, with new leadership in the Department of Education. "This would kind of clear the decks and make sure that future charter schools get chartered under whatever new rules we come up with," Blevins said. Republican Senate Minority Leader Charlie Copeland called the moratorium an attack on public charter schools by a bloated education bureaucracy. Copeland says he believes the success of public charter schools has made them a target for criticism because they are making traditional public schools look bad. There are 17 public charter schools operating in Delaware, 14 chartered by the state and three by the Red Clay school district. Two more have been authorized to open in the fall.
Source: Education Week (subscription required), (06/05/2008)
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New Hampshire Lawmakers Approve $1,168 Per Pupil Boost for Public Charter Schools
Legislators voted June 4 to approve an extra $1,168 per pupil next year to state-approved public charter schools that operate without local financial support. The aid is on top of the $3,832 in adequacy aid the schools will get per pupil, bringing their total state aid to $5,000 per pupil. House members, arguing that public charter schools are state-approved public schools that have no way to tap into property taxes for funding like district-backed schools, had wanted $2,700 more per pupil. The Senate, however, balked at spending money on schools lacking either enough local or outside financial help to remain open. Six public charter schools will benefit from the extra funding; the monies, however, will not come soon enough to save the Franklin Career Academy, which is closing at the end of this school year due to financial struggles. Governor John Lynch, who released extra funds this spring to help Franklin finish the school year, said public charter schools have a valid role to play in New Hampshire's public education system. "A charter school has to be embraced by its community," Lynch said. "Some don't adopt that model, but it's long-lasting." He must sign the bill before it becomes law. Four other public charter schools, started by school districts, are in good financial shape because they receive local district funding.
Source: Boston Globe, (06/04/2008)
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Pennsylvania Legislation Calls for Reduction in Online Public Charter School Funding
A group of state representatives in Pennsylvania wants to reduce payments to cyber public charter schools to $7,020 per pupil, down from the average of roughly $9,000 per pupil. Currently, cyber public charter payments are based on a complicated formula that translates into about 70 percent of each sending district's per-pupil spending. Bill sponsor State Rep. Karen Beyer said she believes the lower funding amount is adequate. "Any parochial school will tell you they can more than educate a child for $7,000," she said. Cyber public charter school operators said, if Beyer's bill passes, they will have to cut back on technology services and some schools might be forced to close. "This bill will take away valuable resources from children who find that public cyber charter schools are the best educational option for them," said Andrew Oberg, assistant director for the Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School. Tim Daniels of the Pennsylvania Coalition of Charter Schools said Beyer's bill is "really limiting the choice of Pennsylvania families and students."
Source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, (06/04/2008)
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Metro Atlanta School Districts Push to be Public Charter School Systems
Last month, the Georgia Board of Education approved an application from Wayne County, a district seeking district-wide public charter status. But it tabled until this week final decisions on applications from Decatur, Marietta and Gainesville city systems. (A fifth district, Chattahoochee County, had been recommended for denial and will also be voted on this week.) Tony Roberts of the Georgia Charter Schools Association said the scrutiny of the applications meant that the state board "got it just right." "This same scrutiny is given to an individual charter school," he said. "It's OK to ask for flexibility, but you've absolutely got to give some things up" such as local control. Decatur and Marietta, both metro Atlanta districts, have sent supplemental letters to clarify their applications. Officials in both systems said they are comfortable with what they proposed. "There's a lot of work that went into this and we feel comfortable that what we put forward was a really strong petition," Marietta schools spokesman Thomas Algarin said. "At this point, the ball's in their court." Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle, who championed the public charter systems law and is now publicly backing those systems awaiting approval by the state board, said, "we're going to do something that is not only going to revolutionize education in Georgia but is going to revolutionize education in the nation." With change, he added, "you're going to find resistance. Obviously, I'd like to give the school board a benefit of the doubt. There is no reason in my mind that any of these [systems] should be denied receiving charter school system status."
Source: Atlanta Journal Constitution, (06/03/2008)
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Countdown to New Orleans: National Charter Schools Conference Less Than One Week Away (June 22-25)
The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools will host the 2008 National Charter Schools Conference from June 22-25 in New Orleans, LA. "Still We Rise: Achieving Academic Excellence at Scale" is the conference theme, reflecting the growth of quality public charter schools across America. The theme has special resonance in New Orleans, which boasts the nation's largest percentage of public charter school enrollment. Register for the conference or apply to sponsor/exhibit at http://www.nationalcharterconference.org. The conference is the largest gathering of charter school operators and proponents in the nation. Major speakers at the conference include Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu, actor and education activist Danny Glover, Alliance President Nelson Smith and Geoffrey Canada, President and Chief Executive Officer for the Harlem Children's Zone. Attendees will learn and share best practices, discuss national and state policy issues, have the opportunity to volunteer at local charter schools, and enjoy special events featuring New Orleans traditions, food and music! Questions? Call 206-463-3344 or e-mail nationalconference@publiccharters.org.
Source: National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, (03/01/2008)
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