Charter school leaders are looking for a kumbaya moment after being rocked by recent stories of corruption and profiteering, which led some Republican candidates to step away from them and adopt a harder line on increasing charter oversight and transparency. (Don’t worry, charter folks, Republicans don’t mean it. If they’re reelected, they’ll be your friends and apologists once again.) So charters are sending out the spin doctors to staunch the bleeding.
Prime example: an op-ed in the Arizona Republic by Rhonda Cagle, chief communications and development officer for Imagine Schools, a national charter chain with over a dozen schools in Arizona. The headline reads, Everything you need to know about Arizona charter schools. Actually, it’s not quite everything, and what Cagle states as fact has a whole lot of spin mixed in.
The op-ed begins by saying charter schools have been under scrutiny lately — true fact. Also that scrutiny can be a good way to stimulate dialog — another true fact. And that lots of families choose to send their kids to charters — yet another true fact. It ends by saying we shouldn’t be asking whether or not charter schools are better, we should applaud the number of viable educational options presented to students and their parents, both charter and district schools. I agree. Good schools for your children are where you find them, and charters are part of the mix.
All that is fine, pretty much down the middle. But at other times, Cagle’s assertions aren’t as hard and fast as she makes them out to be.
Do charters get $951 less per child than district schools when you consider all funding sources as Cagle says? That’s way too simplistic. Depending on how you tweak the data, charters get more, less or pretty much the same amount per child as districts. It’s an open, hotly debated topic without a clear answer.
Are charters public schools as Cagle maintains? Well, maybe, but it’s closer to accurate to say they’re publicly funded independent schools. Some people interpret that to mean they’re private schools or public/private hybrids. I’m not weighing in on the argument, but the idea that charters are public schools, end of discussion, is hardly the settled matter Cagle makes it out to be.
But those are quibbles. Where Cagle really misleads the reader is in this one short paragraph.
By law, Arizona public charter schools are required to accept all students. Public charter schools enroll and provide educational services to special education and English Language Learners. Arizona’s law is intended to prevent public charter schools from “cherry picking” students.
The paragraph treats two hotly contested issues as if they’re so obviously true, they barely deserve mention. Not so.
One of the big lies told by charter school advocates is, since they have open enrollment, meaning they have to accept any student who applies, they don’t cherry pick students. In fact, there are plenty of ways for charters to select the students they want. They can locate their schools in high rent areas to make it more difficult for low income students to attend. If they don’t provide transportation, which is true of most charters, that makes it hard for students who live further away to get there. If they don’t provide lunch, students who qualify for free or reduced lunch are discouraged from attending. They can make liberal use suspensions and expulsions to get rid of unwanted students. And they can stop accepting new students after the 6th grade. Mix and match those and a few other tricks of the charter trade, and it’s easy to end up with a cherry-picked student body, violating the spirit of open enrollment without violating the letter of the law.
To say charters “provide educational services to special education and English Language Learners” is close to a flat-out lie. Some provide the services, but many others don’t. There’s a reason lots of charters have few or no special education or ELL students. They don’t have the specialized staff needed to teach those students, so if parents with a special needs or ELL child apply, it won’t take long for them to find out they’ve come to the wrong place.
The headline for the op ed reads, Everything you need to know about Arizona charter schools. It would be more accurate if it read, Everything we want you to know about Arizona charter schools.
This article appears in Oct 18-24, 2018.
Let us all stop calling charter schools, public schools.The public has no control over the board of directors of charter schools, charter school boards self perpetuate. Charter Schools do not have the same accountability standards that public schools have. Actions that would constitute criminal conduct in public school boards, are certainly okay in charter schools. These include crony procuremen policies. These include profiteering on charter schools. Reporting income and profits for CEOs of charter schools are not required. Public schools are prohibited from having relatives working for the district, that’s par for the course in family-operated charter schools. Get kicked our of a charter school, guess where they go? Charter often cherry pick students by subtle and unsubtle means, and say it outloud, only by accident. Charter schools are not public schools in every sense.
There is far more effective public oversight of charter school boards than there are of public boards. If charter school boards aren’t doing well, parents can and will vote with their feet.
I do agree that for-profit charter schools should be banned and some rules related to administrator pay, procurement, and nepotism established.
Why are we still paying all this money for ELL after 50 years? You’d think everyone in America knew English by now. Immigrants should be required to teach themselves and their children English as a condition of entrance. Oh, yeah, mass immigration and illegal immigration are good for us. I keep forgetting.
“Frances Perkins,” do you think there are no episodes of “crony procurement” going on in public districts? How about the episode of Sanchez and the Strategic Plan consultants? “Relatives working for the district,” Frances? How about the process through which Adelita Grijalva’s mother-in-law became a principal in TUSD?
Is Catalina Foothills School District “public” in the sense that it is open to every comer? No? What determines who does and does not have the right to enroll in a “public” district where every classroom has fully certified teachers and relatively good test scores? No one can argue that “public” district 16 is not self-selective and access is not influenced by the economic means of the parents.
That’s right, David: spin doctor. That’s what you and many of your devoted followers are. But it’s looking like your misguided and manipulative Arizona branch of the so-called “democratic” (?!) party is going to lose, again, next week. Hallelujah.
“Charter Schools ” is a Republican creation to steal public money and put it in private hands. Republicans are content to take baby steps with their incremental dismantling of current government protocols to achieve their long range goals and they are persistent and determined. By privatizing every aspect of our current bureaucratically controlled system they can undermine the individual by eliminating unions, declaring the minimum wage as unconstitutional,decide which students to allow in their system, and establishing their own brand of distorted views of history and science. The perfect example of my argument is Diane Douglas who advocates teaching intelligent design along with actual science classes. This Republican mentality has been happening since the Supreme Court case of Brown VS the Board of Education in the 1950’s. When the court demanded that schools be completely integrated the conservatives in southern states were enraged and ready to scorch the earth with their hatred. That’s when the movement started and Republicans worked in secret for every gain they could make. Now the Supreme Court, the Senate, the House of Representatives, the White House and most state governments are controlled by Republicans. Now maybe you can understand why Republicans were more than happy to allow Russia to assist in the 2016 elections.
Publish profits, operating costs and ALL executive salaries now !!