Several superintendents from different parts of the country told an audience at the National Alliance For Public Charter Schools conference that it is critical charter schools and traditional public schools work together to meet the needs of all students.
Pedro Martinez, superintendent of the San Antonio Independent School District, said it is important leaders do not get bogged down in philosophical debates.
“Let’s focus on what matters,” Martinez said. “How do we create options that are inclusive?”
The superintendents were speaking on a panel about how they have been able to overcome obstacles and work together with charters. The discussion centered around three principles key to advancing choice: equitable access; transparent indicators of quality and equitable funding. But the superintendents acknowledged in working together, there were challenges that may impede that progress. (more…)
The idea that school districts and charter schools would set aside their differences and start working together isn't exactly unheard of. It's happening now in cities around the country. In some cases it's been going on for years.
But it's still rare enough that it's often portrayed as a man-bites-dog story, or as a peacekeeping mission by district leaders.
A new report from the Center on Reinventing Public Education says states can help make collaboration at the local level more common. They can improve charter school rules and laws. They can run political interference for local district leaders, and use their bully pulpit to highlight success stories. And they can offer extra money to help decentralized, charter-heavy school systems work better for all kids.
The report cites Florida, which has been running a competitive grant program aimed at drawing high-quality national charter networks to its inner cities, as "an early leader in state-led stimulus."
It also suggests "the time is ripe" for other states to follow suit. Among other things, charter schools enroll an ever-larger share of students (more than 270,000 in Florida, or nearly one in ten public-school students). And Congress just overhauled federal school accountability rules and Charter School Program grants.
"Charter schools are a big and growing part of public education: They are here to stay and their role in public education will only expand," the report says. "This is a time of profound opportunity. Charter schools and districts cannot do all this themselves."
Under the revised federal education law, states can use federal funding to keep better tabs on charter school authorizers. In Florida, that means school districts, which sponsor all but a handful of the state's more than 650 charters. (more…)
Over the weekend, the Tampa Bay Times took an in-depth look at a battle between the Hillsborough County School Board and Kids Community College, a charter school it authorizes.
The article raises a number of interesting issues about charter school politics and practices in Florida, but one, raised by Jenna Hodgens, the district's charter school director deserves extra attention.
Basically, the school charges students for certain items and also seeks "suggested donations" from parents. The school says these extra contributions are voluntary, and notes many district schools charge activity fees. But when it comes to low-income parents' perceptions of the school, that may be beside the point.
Hodgens said it's clear that poor families perceive Kid's Community as costly — not a private school, yet not a true public school either.
"And see, that's what bothers me, I guess, as a person," she said. "Because I'm thinking, if I'm a poor kid and I tell my mom I want to go to Kid's Community College and then my mom finds out you have to pay a $500 enhancement fee and $280 in consumables, my mom says to me, 'You're going to stay at Gibsonton.' I don't even have a choice."
So, as a charter school, she said, "you can select your kids without selecting your kids if you do certain things."
In other words, while charter schools are public schools and state law limits their ability to charge additional fees, parents may perceive this charter school as an exclusive option that might cost them more money out of pocket.
This sounds like an opportunity for the district and charter schools to collaborate. (more…)
From voucher regulation to district-charter collaboration, here is our weekly rundown of what happened over the past week in school choice.
There was some good news on the West Coast, from the L.A. School Report.
At her first community town hall as LA Unified’s superintendent, Michelle King received the most applause when she called for a healing between charter and district school factions. Seven weeks into her job, she met Tuesday morning with more than 700 parents, teachers, principals and local residents in a relatively low-income area in the north San Fernando Valley where many of those in attendance had strong feelings about charter schools.
“We are all LA Unified school students,” King said in response to a charter school parent who was asking about the district’s perceived bias against charters. “It is unfortunate we have labels, saying that this one is better than that one. It’s not us versus them.”
King then shared a plan she is developing. “One of the things we are looking at, and I’m meeting with charter leaders, is to have some sort of forum or event and bring those traditional schools, magnets, pilots, charters all together and share what is working best.”
She added, “I can’t do it alone, we need your help. We need all of us breaking down walls and barriers on behalf of kids and be working together. It doesn’t help to have battles over property.”
The idea here is that serving students and the public matters more than who happens to run the schools.
There are efforts to break down the walls between districts and charters all over the country, but collaboration isn't the norm, yet. And Los Angeles still seems to have rifts that need mending.
Once the hot politics are defused, a deeper question arises. Is it possible to create school systems where local governments focus on the "big picture" while educators focus on running schools?
Meanwhile...
Gov. Terry McAuliffe put the kibosh on a "Tebow Law" in Virginia, denying many home schoolers the "privilege" of participating in extracurricular activities or sports.
Rosa Parks dug school choice.
Helping parents navigate choice-based school systems.
As time runs out on Washington State charter schools, who will champion the cause of the students they serve?
Which is more likely to be terminated: A charter school's contract, or a teacher's?
Where does presidential candidate Bernie Sanders stand on charters?
D.C. designs schools to meet the needs of immigrant kids. (This is also happening elsewhere.)
What's next for education reform in D.C.?
The real goal of personalized learning.
School choice supporters rallied in Oklahoma.
Arizona's bid to expand education savings accounts ran into trouble. Were funding concerns misguided?
Louisiana lawmakers advanced a spending plan that would dismantle vouchers. Was that a mistake? Then there was the debate over regulation. More on that here and here.
Kentucky could become the 44th state to allow charter schools.
Tweet of the Week
LA lawmakers debating killing this program based on new results, says @MichaelPetrilli, we all agree that's a bad idea #schoolchoiceregs
— Cato CEF (@CatoCEF) March 4, 2016
Quote of the Week
There’s no greater bully pulpit in most cities across the country than the mayor. And if we can elevate the issues of education, the issues of housing, the issues of safety then we use the bully pulpit to do that. When I came in as mayor, I came in very clear: I thought there was no issue more important than the issue of educating our young people properly.
—Denver mayor Michael Hancock, whose city knows a thing or two about district-charter collaboration, on how local officials can impact education without having direct control over schools. (The 74.)
We hope we can work better together. Send tips, links, suggestions or criticism to tpillow[at]sufs[dot]org.
This week in school choice is our weekly rundown of school choice news and notes from around the country. It appears on our blog early Monday morning, but you can subscribe to get it on Sundays here.
Three large school districts along Florida's I-4 corridor are angling for grants that could help them draw nationally recognized charter school networks to low-income neighborhoods.
The Orange, Polk and Hillsborough County school districts applied this month for $2.5 million in funding from round two of the Florida Department of Education's district-charter collaboration program.
The three districts are among the ten largest school systems in the Florida, and the top 30 in the country. Their proposals, published here for the first time, describe how they would use chartering to combat persistent academic struggles in high-poverty areas.
The potential collaborations break from the charged politics that often dominate the headlines. They represent an approach to charter schools that's still new for many Florida school districts.
As Polk County schools officials write in their proposal:
The Polk Charter Compact will turn charter school management in Polk from a compliance and coping exercise to purposeful tool for improved student performance in high-need areas where students are not currently receiving adequate educational services.
The department earlier this year awarded grants to Miami-Dade, Duval, and Broward Counties, but Broward's school board rejected the money, creating an opening for other districts to apply.
Three other districts — Palm Beach, Pinellas, and Pasco — were eligible to apply, but didn't. Pinellas is the only district that was eligible to apply for a grant in both rounds, but showed no interest.
Around the country, education reformers trying to help more districts and charters work together. They're also looking at the factors that can draw top-performing charter schools to low-income neighborhoods. With that in mind, the three latest collaboration proposals are worth a closer look.
Bridging the gap in Hillsborough
Hillsborough officials say they want to bring a new high-impact charter school to Tampa's urban core, where middle school proficiency rates are roughly 40 percent lower than elsewhere in the district.
The district says it wants to share know-how with the charter organization, and help with teacher recruitment and facilities, in a collaboration that could "serve as a replicable model for other districts around the nation." (more…)
Florida education officials are growing the pool of school districts that could soon get extra money to recruit and collaborate with "high-impact" charter schools.
School districts in Miami-Dade and Broward Counties won state grants last year to bring national charter school networks into their most disadvantaged neighborhoods. A third, Broward, applied for the money, but the school board there ultimately voted to reject it.
This year, another district could get up to $2.5 million in federal and philanthropic money to attract a top charter school operator.
This year, the state Department of Education invited seven districts to submit competing proposals for round two. Broward could give the grant a second look. Palm Beach, Pasco, Pinellas, Polk, Orange and Hillsborough County school districts are also in the running. Districts were chosen based on size and need. To be eligible this year, they needed to have 20 or more schools graded D or F.
So far, Orange, Hillsborough and Polk have said they're interested (see the breakdown below, taken from p. 28 of this presentation to a state House panel). (more…)
One of the three Florida school districts in line to receive $3.3 million to recruit high-achieving charter schools into disadvantaged neighborhoods appears to be pulling away from the initiative.
Broward County School Board members decided Tuesday to tell the state, as one member put it, "thanks but no thanks."
District Superintendent Robert Runcie said the grants were part of a state effort to tackle the tricky problem of charter school quality.
Among other things, they would have allowed districts to hire more staff to help oversee the charters they authorize.
Broward, Florida's second-largest school district, indicated in grant documents that its charter school office has a staff of seven, charged with keeping tabs on nearly 100 charter schools — more, Runcie has pointed out, than there are in the entire state of New Jersey.
The grant would also have allowed the district to use charters to meet its own goals, rather than passively awaiting applications from operators who might be loathe to target areas with the greatest needs. The new, proactive approach called for seeking competitive proposals from charter organizations with strong track records, directing them toward an academically undeserved area west of Fort Lauderdale, and ensuring they cultivated ties with the surrounding community.
"This is a grant that affords us enormous flexibility to focus on a primary goal of improving student achievement in low-performing schools in the district — chronically low-performing schools where we've struggled in the past," Runcie said.
School Board members, however, did not see it what way. There was no vote on the plan after Tuesday's two-hour workshop, because the board needed consensus to proceed, and most members made clear that they opposed the idea.
One objection, they stressed over and over again, was the spread of low-quality charters that under-perform, and in the worst cases, shut down soon after they open — problems the grant proposal was intended to help address, and which board members repeatedly blamed on a lack of state "regulation" of charter schools.
Florida's two largest school districts could soon be searching for charter schools looking to serve their most disadvantaged neighborhoods.
The state Department of Education has chosen three school districts, including Broward and Miami-Dade Counties, to receive grants intended to entice more national charter school networks to open in Florida's academically struggling urban areas and stoke new collaborations between districts and charters.
Duval County, the third district chosen from four that applied, already has a high-profile charter school collaborator in KIPP Jacksonville.
The two South Florida districts indicated in their grant applications that they intend to recruit similar "high-impact" charter schools from around the country. They described plans to seek proposals from charter networks looking to open schools in high-needs areas and work with the districts on improving results for children in poverty.
First, their school boards need to sign off. John Schuster, a spokesman for the Miami-Dade County school district, said in an email that a school board committee would likely vet the charter school collaboration grant this week, which would allow the full board to decide how to proceed at its Feb. 11 meeting.
A spokeswoman for the state education department said it has so far committed about $665,000 in grant funding to each district — a three-way split of $2 million in Race to the Top funding, which is expected to start flowing to districts once their final plans are approved.
