There’s this kid who goes to a charter school. Nice kid, not-so-nice charter school. Before we continue with this particular story, I should make it clear that I am not a fan of charter schools, in general, nor this one, in particular.
It’s been 25 years since failing governor Fife Symington and a vengeful Legislature foisted upon us a system that was nothing more than a screw-you to public-school teachers and one big, giant (unregulated) loophole through which scammers and scammer/legislators have siphoned off hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars with little or nothing to show for it.
Do you know how many charter schools have come and gone over the past 25 years? Don’t feel bad; the State of Arizona doesn’t know, either. Do you know how many hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars have been lost to con men and thieves? For that matter, how much of your money has ended up in the pockets of legislators who have used laws they passed to enrich themselves and then used bills they have refused to pass to prevent any oversight of the crooked operation? Nope, we don’t know that, either.
What bothers me the most is that they continue to trot out the same two or three shining examples while ignoring the fact that, overall, an entire generation of Arizona’s young people have been ill-served by this “experiment.” Are kids from two-parent families who live in gated communities going to do well on standardized tests at a school that hand-picks its students and turns away all kids with special needs? They’d better. The only real news would be if they didn’t do well.
BASIS Oro Valley is probably going to have higher test scores than a public school in another part of town. But the kids at BASIS aren’t going to do better than the kids at nearby Ironwood Ridge (public) High School. (Plus, the kids at Ironwood Ridge get to play all different kinds of sports and be in the marching band and drama productions.) Likewise, kids at a westside charter school aren’t going to do better than kids at a westside public school and, if they opened a charter school in the foothills, despite the inherent advantages that come with choosing a student body, those kids wouldn’t out-perform the kids at Catalina Foothills High.
There are certainly some hard-working teachers and some good students at some of Arizona’s charter schools, but the intentional debasement of the public-school system for petty political (and obviously greedy) purposes could have and should have been avoided. Arizona’s charter schools are closing in record numbers and the financial scandals are spreading. I especially like the ill-named American Leadership Academy in Gilbert, which is banned from participating in high-school playoffs due to illegal recruiting. The school’s founder recently cashed out to the tune of tens of millions of dollars (in taxpayer money), leaving the charter school’s new owners with debts that won’t be paid off until 2052, if ever.
My sainted Italian mother, may she rest in peace, used to look at me and say “Tu sei diverso!” That meant “You’re different,” and it never sounded like a compliment. Referring to my modest abilities in the areas of math and science, she told me, “You have a gift from God and you have to share it.” If she was mentioning God, I knew she was dead serious, so I took it to heart.
Accordingly, I have been tutoring people my entire life. And I have never taken a penny for it, much to the chagrin of my long-suffering wife. (Some of her fellow teachers supplement their meager incomes by tutoring at night and on weekends.) I will help anybody who asks as long as they are sincere in their desire to learn and they show up ready to work.
So, this kid asked for help and I said sure. I asked what the last math class he had taken was. (I’ll use “he” but it could be a she). He said he had received a “B” in Pre-Calc. I decided to start with a review of Algebra II stuff before moving on. He couldn’t do any of it, so we moved further back. He couldn’t do Algebra I stuff; in fact, he struggled with all but the most basic mathematical operations.
I sensed his embarrassment and told him that we would find a good place from which to start and move on from there. And so we have. But I was heated. I called his school to find out how he could have passed Pre-Calc when his math skills are at an elementary school level. They said (quite correctly) that his records are private. I asked if I could contact his math teacher so we could set up a program to help the kid. I was told that such contact would be “inappropriate.”
The math here is painfully simple. Charter schools get nearly $7,000 per student from the State of Arizona (which is more than real public schools get per student). If students start getting failing grades and they go elsewhere, the school’s owners might have to put off buying that beach condo.
How any more struggling kids like him are out there, human dollar signs being run through the diploma mill? I don’t know…and neither does the State of Arizona.
This article appears in Jan 31 – Feb 6, 2019.
Charter schools are a direct response to the failure of public schools. Mo’ money for them programs, but never any metrics to measure success – due to some ridiculous reason or another.
How about you stop attacking the charter schools and copying what parents and kids actually want?
I can’t tell who’s worse in 2019, journalists or public school teachers, overly self important – and we’re all pretty much sick of your whining and your purposeful misinformation.
Do you know how many public schools here in Tucson have received national or state recognition of excellence compared to charter schools? 0, none, nada. Public schools are over burden with administration and its outrageous salaries, not to mention TUSD mirrors the incompetence of the people elected and hired to run the city. Fix the public schools and town clowncial and the need for charter schools would be reduced. But then they do keep getting re-elected, so there is the made your bed saying.
Your anecdote is not restricted to Charter Schools. I can recount many students who took AP Calculus in TUSD and Sunnyside who tested into Pre-Algebra at Pima.
Public schools are stealing much more money and turning out far less educated members of society. Where is that article every week?
What an ignorant rant.
In 1992, the year before school choice started in Arizona, the 362,000 students in Arizona public schools murdered 72 people. In 2012, the 1.1 million students in public schools murdered 7 people. School choice civilizes students, allowing them to find a place that works for them emotionally.
Compare our results to Connecticut by taking a look at the National Assessment of Educational Progress math scores. Our African American students not only outscore African Americans in all other 49 states, they outscore Connecticut Blacks by more than a whole year of progress. And, our Hispanics and Whites also trounce their Hispanics and Whites.
This despite Connecticut doubling our household income and spending $22,000 per year while we spend $8,000 (NEA rankings).
And, charter schools don’t cost us a penny contrary to your “millions”. The average charter school burdens the taxpayer to the tune of more than $1,000 per student less than the typical district school. That’s almost $200 million a year in savings.
And, the effect of charters on district schools has been enormously positive not negative as you infer. Recently, Sean Reardon of Stanford did a national ranking of every school district in the nation based on 5 year academic gains. One of the most sophisticated education studies of all time. Of the 200 largest school districts in the nation, Arizona had three in the top 10: Chandler, Washington and Peoria. Looking at our entire state? We didn’t have a single school district below the tenth percentile. Connecticut? 13 districts below the 10th percentile.
The value we get from charter schools is in the billions. Since 2000, Arizona has added over 460,000 jobs. Connecticut, with their taxation burden of schools? a negative 14,000.
The best is yet to come. Arizona is going to be the first state and have the first school district and school to break the speed of light in education. Currently, no school distirict in the nation can move student more than 30% extra even though 70% extra is necessary to move minorities to equality with whites by 12th grade.
We are going to be the state that makes “all men are created equal” come to life and be real.
Tom, go back to school. You need work on the 5th grade standard on fractions, ratios, proportions and percentages.
Excellent article, and spot on.
I got hired by a charter school on Prince back in 2012 to tutor any students who wanted to take the AIMS test. Few did, for they preferred to sit around and talk with their friends, but what I saw, rather what I didn’t see, was astounding. Not one “teacher” presented lessons to any class. They had packets available for students who chose to work, and they were available if anyone asked for help, but there were no presentations, nothing that resembled a lesson. After teaching in public schools for 16 years, this charter more resembled a scam than a school.
Thanks to the voters of Arizona for removing Huppenthal from public office. That has got to be the all time greatest misuse of statistics in history. Lets see, less murders, correlated with the rise of charter schools, which civilize society. Im guessing we could correlate less murders with the rise in the numbers of haboobs, or the lowering of Lake Mead, or all the iillegal signs you put up all over Arizona in your ignominious defeat, or sunspots.
Looks like somebody get up on the wrong side of the bed.
Maybe if the public schools would come to the realization that teaching students should be their only adjective, not indoctrination , more parents might be willing to enroll their children in their districts.
Response to Frances Perkins;
“We could correlate murders to haboobs or the lowering of lake mead.” Perhaps, but correlation is only step one. Step two is working out the causality.
When Steve Jobs went to a public school in California that experienced knifes at school, a rape and a bus burning, he announced to his parents that he would no longer go to school.
His parents shelled out the money required to mortgage a home in a better school district where he met Steve Wozniak and the teacher who taught him the art of abstration which he used to revolutionize six different industries.
What about all of the students who couldn’t afford a greater mortgage required to move to a new district or school?
Bottom line: people would be stunned to know the details of extremely troubled kids and the number of choices they are making in Arizona. The grand champion changed schools over 40 times.
In Arizona, each of these changes gives the student a brand new start, one at the same level of every other student.
In other states, these students get channeled into alternative schools where the data shows that half of the students have used meth.
Our drop in violent crime among juveniles wasn’t more dramatic than the rest of the nation, it was hugely more dramatic. Our entire juvenile corrections system has just about been shut down by the tremendous decline in violent juvenile crime.
So, yes, not only is their a huge correlation between crime dropping and charter school attendance rising but it is very likely stronly causal.
Got any facts to go with those accusation?
Great response. Just what the leftists can’t stand to hear. They believe nobody can get by without them, and they are wrong. many are not only doing fine, they are excelling under improved conditions. Public schools are for Democrats. They have killed the institution, much as they have everything else they have tried.
Ever since Brown vs Board of Education, conservatives have been nothing but contemptuous towards public schools, and have and will continue to undermine them until they are eradicated. The idea that all children regardless of race or class deserve access to a free quality public education, the foundation of a healthy democracy, is anathema to the white privileged oligarchy, and those who aspire to join their ranks.
Some Charter Schools can be quite good, but others can be very bad. What bothers me most of all is the adamant refusal, protected by AZ politicians, to reveal salaries, profits and operating costs even though Charter Schools receive public tax moneys in order to operate. How much tax money goes out-of-state to for-profit corporations and CEOs? Nobody knows. How much does a state approved local charter owner/operator give him/herself as an executive salary? Nobody knows.
Complain about public school districts and their shortcomings as much as you want, but every dollar for administrative salaries, teacher salaries, other worker salaries, supplies and equipment is listed carefully on spread sheets for any/all to see. Why do charter schools refuse to do the same? Why is it even legally allowed that nobody knows about profits and salaries that are directly generated via tax money mandatorily paid by all citizens?
Unless they honestly open the books to taxpayers, Charter School owners/operators will always be suspects in possible fraud, excessive executive salary gouging and whatever else they are hiding from the rest of us. Open the books, or get your money elsewhere.
Would you believe me if I told you that Mr. Huppenthal was making up his juvenile crime stats- Violent arrests are lower in AZ but they were also lower back in 2006 (compared to 2014) while total arrests are higher now they were also higher than. Unlike Mr. Huppenthal I will actually give you all a source to go look at the stats. http://www.jjgps.org/arizona
Also notably Mr. Huppenthal does not address the real transparency problems and potential for corruption in the current set up of Charter schools in AZ.
This piece is absurd — yeah, that’s coming from an Arizona progressive leftist Democratic cuck, or whatever it is you wanna call me!
Continuing to look at “all” charter schools as if they’re the same makes no sense. We now know — 25 years into the Arizona charter school experiment — that there are awful charter schools, there are average charters, there are good charters, and there are great charters.
Soooooo… how about we look at student results and school success — instead of maligning every last charter school? What some of the great charters in Arizona, and in Tucson, (like, indeed, BASIS Oro Valley, mentioned above — among other charters in this area) have done for students is extraordinary. I don’t want these charter schools to go away; I, for one, find value in kids here being well-educated.
Look at what matters most regarding schools: giving kids an excellent education.
And as with most issues, nuance is key. Find some.
After sending one of my children to public school, I learned an important lesson, I will never do it again.