The poor, underprivileged children who leave their uninspiring, low-performing public schools to enter a charter school are being short-changed. So says Mark Kenen, the executive director of the Massachusetts Charter Public School Association.
These kids attend what are supposed to be inherently innovative schools, schools that are supposed to show public schools how it’s done, schools that generate higher student performance at a lower cost. Charter school students are alleged to graduate from high school and to enroll in college at higher rates than their public school peers, but according to the charter school lobby, they are getting shafted.
Charter school lobby report in hand, Kenen added his voice to a chorus of charter schools across the country calling for more public money to be spent on charter schools for building facilities.
“Charter school students should have the same amount of money paid for their education as their peers in the community,” says Kenen. We’re hoping that the Legislature will see that charter students are getting the short end of the stick.”
In other words, they want more money. Tuition from public schools, reimbursement for transportation (should they choose to use it), and donations from business and philanthropic organizations are not enough. Charter schools, which allegedly do a better job with less, are being ripped off, and according to the Boston Globe, they are now lobbying for “a bigger piece of the state budget pie—despite concerns that a funding increase might divert resources from public schools.”
New revenue for charter schools, particularly access to a new revenue stream, is a bad idea. Although it’s possible that the money wouldn’t be diverted from public school sources, it would open the door to a new, uncontested source of funding. Neither charter nor public schools are happy with the current funding mechanism–tuition payments for each student that attends a charter school. But that funding mechanism has an advantage: it balance the power of charter and public schools. Lawmakers can’t provide more funding to or lift the cap on charter schools without political pressure from public schools; public schools and their allies can’t do much harm to existing public schools without equal pressure. It’s more or less a deadlock, one that stresses out politicians who are lobbied from both sides, but one that prevents Massachusetts from the influence-peddling of well-heeled education reformers who are corrupting the education systems of other states.
Providing charters with a new source of funding, unchecked by public schools, has proven dangerous elsewhere. Crain’s Chicago Business, for example, reports that “one chain of privately operated charter schools recently almost got a whopping $35 million grant—as much as Chicago Public Schools were to get for the entire city—thanks to a well-placed pol or two.” The bill was killed, but it came too close for comfort. The same charter school chain, however, already received a $100 million for a Soccer Academy High School. More recently, it turns out that the chain United Neighborhood Organization hasn’t been contributing to the Chicago Teacher Pension System as it is obligated to do. Of course this is all in Chicago where political corruption is a favorite pastime. Things aren’t much better, however, in New Jersey where oversight is lacking. A relatively common occurrence in charters across the country is embezzlement. D.C. officials alleged in a lawsuit. Here’s on example from the Washington Post: Tuesday that three former managers at the Northeast Washington school diverted at least $3 million of that money to enrich themselves, engaging in a “pattern of self-dealing” that was part of an elaborate contracting scam. The civil case alleges that the managers created two for-profit companies to provide services to Options at high prices, sometimes with the help of a senior official at the D.C. Public Charter School Board.
Massachusetts does charter schooling better than much of the country. Our law, for example, doesn’t allow for-profit charters, though it permits for-profit educational management organizations that can manage both charter or public schools. And in spite of the Gloucester debacle, our oversight is generally better. There is, however, room for concern. Hughes was run by politically-connected Springfield players, two of whom were felons: a board member convicted of embezzlement and the development officer convicted of mail fraud and bid-rigging. The development officer is also the brother of one of the Springfield’s state representatives. A cheating scandal finally put a stake through the school’s heart, but the school’s was a perfect example of graft. The school was loaning money to a non-profit organization to which it was paying an exorbitant rent for its the school building .
Charter schools, much more so than public schools, are opportunities for scams. The Commonwealth’s oversight may be relatively good now, but the next governor–particularly if he’s a Republican–could change things. Policy drift could open the door for the kind of corruption other states are experiencing. There’s gold in them there schools and offering state money to them is bad idea.
…that if you take public money you have to follow public rules.
rules. Unfortunately, they are just a different set of rules.
Case in point I’ve asked previously why charters aren’t unionized and have been told if they tried they’d be fired. Yet, public teachers are so protected. Charter teachers should be able to join the same union as the public teachers in their district and negotiate accordingly.
unionize. I think one of the things that prevents them is the fact that half the faculty turns over every year.
have the propensity to become hard-wired political cesspools. One local charter school was cited for a “clear record of insularity and opaque decision-making” and failure to expand the Board of Trustees, who are currently politically hired wired locals. And the oversight by the Commonwealth simply isn’t there. When I raised an issue about treatment of kids on an ed plan by a charter, I was told by the DOE to take it up with the school board….who are all politically hard wired folks who don’t care about these kids. I recall some years back when I was asked by a friend to participate at a meeting with her and Charter officials concerning her son’s behavior (they kept suspending him) I asked the principal and teachers if they convened a hearing to determine whether the behaviors being exhibited were connected to the disability. I was then asked to leave the meeting and the school. When this friend attempted to kick this up to the Trustees, she got nowhere. So my takeaway is that they want the cash without the rules. Screw ’em, I say. They sold the Commonwealth on the idea that they could educate kids better, cheaper, faster on less money. Let them live with the “contract.”
The notion that the Commonwealth provides good oversight of charter schools is starting to seem more and more like an urban legend.
The State Auditor’s Office has just issued a scathing 33 page report on the opereations of the now defunct Gloucester Community Arts Charter School.
Close on the heels of that we have another mid-year charter school implosion in Worcester.
For you charter history buffs, this was one of the other two charter schools mentioned in Paul Reville’s famous late night email. As we know, Secretary Reville chose Gloucester as his bone to throw to his “key moderate allies” from the three schools rejected by Charter School Office evaluators, something that neither he nor Commissioner Chester thought worth mentioning the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education when the Board met to vote on charters that year. Spirit of Knowledge came back next year and received their charter.
Mark,
We corresponded a couple years ago. I suggested you might visit a few charters. Given you’re a busy educator, I’m guessing you haven’t had the chance, but might be worth it at some point.
For purposes of this: can I pose this? Which do you think has nicer facilities – a typical district school, or a typical charter.
Contra your meme of flush, I think the district schools. At least in Boston where I’ve visited all the charters, those kids are in school buildings that are far more cramped, not nearly as nice, as district schools.
An architect friend who designs for both types says he typically allocates 2x to 3x per student more for district kids than for charter kids.
And in the case of at least one Boston district school he’s working on, he’s allocating 6x per kid compared to his Boston charter clients.
have facilities that are as good as public schools. I have colleagues who worked at SABIS whom I could ask about facilities, but I really don’t have time for visits. I looked at expenditures on charter school buildings at one point, but I don’t recall them. I know in some cases they are high.
I’m chairing my town’s school building committee; building an elementary school for 250 kids will likely cost around $25 million. My town will probably pay for about 40% of that.
My concern with opening up new sources of charter funding for buildings or anything else or changing the annoying, current tuition method is opening up the sort of problems experienced in other states. Robert B. Hughes school is the only corrupt charter I can name in Massachusetts. It lasted for a long time because its principals were politically connected in Springfield and at the statehouse. That kind of scandal is par for the course in other states.
We have a Democratic administration right now and we still end up with predictable failures of oversight like Gloucester. I’m afraid the charter school lobby, which has enough money to buy candidates, will be free to lobby unchallenged. The heavy hitters, like Broad and Gates, will be able to buy less regulation or more likely the intentional ignoring of policy. With a Republican administration, this becomes more possible.
I dunno. Charters didn’t have that much success on facilities funding with Weld, Cellucci, Swift, or Romney.
indirectly by the New Market’s tax credit?