Children's Education Council of Missouri » Charter Schools

CECM Supports Charter Schools on “The Jaco Report”

earl — Mon, 10 May 2010 15:52:01 +0000

CECM recently appeared on “The Jaco Report” to support charter public schools. The show is a local issues show that airs on St. Louis’ Fox affiliate on Sunday mornings.

Will Missouri Learn Its Lesson from ‘Race to the Top,’ Round One?

earl — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 18:52:23 +0000

Results are in on Missouri’s first-round application for the $4.35 billion “Race to the Top Fund” and they are not pretty. The state finished a distant 33rd out of 41 applicants. Forty states and the District of Columbia participated in the first round of the U.S. Department of Education’s competitive grant program, which aims to bolster states who are seeking education reform initiatives which improve student achievement.

Missouri’s $743.5 million application was hit hard in critical areas, including limits on charter schools and overall conditions for reform in the state. Delaware and Tennessee were the only winners in the first round. Delaware was awarded more than $100 million and Tennessee, a state in the same suggested bidding range as Missouri, was allotted more than $500 million.

Here is what some of the reviewers of Missouri’s application had to say:

“The state has a charter school law that only allows charter schools to operate in Kansas City and St. Louis. Although a considerable percentage of students in these locations are in charter schools, the effect of this law limits the educational choices available to students who do not live in these cities.”
“Low points are given to the Missouri proposal on this subsection concerned with charter law because the Missouri charter school law has limits on both geography and sponsors.”
“The applicant makes almost no effort in this section of the application to describe the extent to which the State, in addition to information provided under other State Reform Conditions Criteria, has created through law, regulation, or policy, other conditions favorable to education reform or innovation that have increased student achievement or graduation rates, narrowed achievement gaps, or resulted in other important outcomes.”

These statements paint a dire picture of the current state of education reform in Missouri. The real question is: Will Missouri learn its lesson from missing out on the first round of money and work toward reforms now that will make us seriously competitive in the second round? Applications for Round Two are due June 1^st, with winners being announced in September.

It is obvious from the comments above that expanding charter school options outside of the St. Louis and Kansas City school districts would dramatically improve the chances of being competitive for part of the $3.4 billion remaining to be awarded. But, two bills in the Missouri legislature that would expand access to charter schools to most of the state, SB 838 and HB 2200, have yet to even receive a committee hearing.

Missouri should take note that both first-round winners made moves to expand access to charter schools before submitting their first-round applications. Furthermore, states that finished close to the Round One winners already have passed, or are currently debating, legislation that would expand charter schools as a way to cross the finish line and stand on the podium with the other expected 10 to 12 winners in Round Two.

The Missouri House’s budget made significant funding cuts to Missouri education, and the Senate’s budget borrowed from stimulus funds held for next year to restore those cuts. While legislators will continue to sort out the budget mess in Jefferson City, it is clear that education funding in Missouri is on shaky ground. This program would be a good way to implement needed education reforms in the state as well as bolster the state’s coffers. This unprecedented pot of money is likely a once in a lifetime opportunity. It would be a disservice to the children of this state if we let it slip away.

Missouri’s Race to the Top Application Hit on Limited Charters

earl — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 20:12:24 +0000

Race to the Top Reviewer’s Comments

Ensuring Successful Conditions for High Performing Charter Schools

Average of scores: 17.8 out of 40 possible points

Reviewers of Missouri’s $743.5 million Race to the Top application had numerous negative comments for the state’s application as it related to charter schools and state law restricting them to only the districts of St. Louis and Kansas City. Below are some of the comments taken directly from the review forms.

“Low points were given to this subsection because the Missouri charter school law has geographic and sponsor limitations.” – Reviewer #4

“Low points are given to the Missouri proposal on this subsection concerned with charter law because the Missouri charter school law has limits on both geography and sponsors.” – Reviewer #4

“The state has a charter school law that only allows charter schools to operate in Kansas City and St. Louis. Although a considerable percentage of students in these locations are in charter schools, the effect of this law limits the educational choices available to students who do not live in these cities.” – Reviewer #5

“Missouri’s charter school law is restrictive in that it limits the establishment of charter schools to locales with populations greater than 350,000 residents.” – Reviewer #1

“The geographic restriction for charter operations imposed by state law, has the effect of establishing a low cap on the opportunities for more charter school operations.” – Reviewer #1

“There are concerns about why charter schools are limited to two urban school districts…” – Reviewer #3

It is clear that in order to compete for Missouri’s share of this $4.35 billion federal program that the legislature must lift the geographic restrictions on charter schools immediately. SB 838 and HB 2200 both significantly increase the geography where charter schools could operate and increase accountability standards for authorizers beyond what the State Board of Education has requested. These two bills should receive fair hearings in each chamber’s education committees at the next available committee meeting. The Children’s Education Council of Missouri fully supports the passage of both of these bills.

Full scorecards and review sheets can be found online at http://www2.ed.gov/programs/racetothetop/phase1-applications/index.html

March 2010 State Board of Education Meeting Report

earl — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 20:14:13 +0000

The March 2010 State Board of Education meeting primarily focused on reviewing the budget passed by the Missouri House of Representatives. State Board members heard the dire state of Missouri’s budget and discussed ways for the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to save money and adequately fund education.

In conjunction with cost cutting measures, State Education Commissioner Chris Nicastro outlined her proposed plan for reorganizing the department. Under the plan, the department would operate under two arms. The first arm would be for administrative and fiscal services. The second arm would be for learning services. The reorganization plan also added departments for data systems and early learning, as well as a newly created position for a Legislative Liason.

In addition to budget and reorganization discussions, the Board also approved two applications for charter schools.St. Louis Collegiate will be located in St. Louis and was approved to begin operations in the 2010 – 2011 school year. Students in Kansas City will also have a new public charter school option, as the Board approved the charter of DeLaSalle Charter School. The school is one in a growing nationwide trend that is converting from a private school to a charter public school. This school will also begin charter operations in the 2010 – 2011 school year.

The board also heard updates on Missouri’s work toward the Common Core State Standards Iniative and round two of the Race to the Top competitive grant program. These are two initives pushed by United States Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.

CECM Weighs In on Charter School Study for St. Louis Beacon

earl — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 22:22:01 +0000

Does school choice lead to resegregation?

By Dale Singer, Beacon staff

Posted 4:47 p.m. Wed., 02.24.10 – A new report on the racial makeup of enrollment in the nation’s charter schools says two goals seem to be colliding: deregulation and desegregation.

The research conducted by the Civil Rights Project at UCLA says that as more students attend classes in charter schools, which are funded by tax dollars but separate from traditional school districts, the ideal of integration too often has been ignored.

As a result, in the words of Gary Orfield, co-director of the project, “The charter school movement has been a major political success, but it has been a civil rights failure.”

Orfield, who wrote the foreword to the report — ”Choice Without Equity,” which was released earlier this month — called on the Obama administration to make sure that as it pushes for expansion of charters, civil rights considerations are not overlooked.

“I’m sure that a president who benefited from integrated schools and colleges and is a proud follower of Martin Luther King would not want to use federal funds to further accelerate resegregation of students of color or perpetuate inferior schools for those same students,” Orfield wrote.

“Many parents trapped in weak schools want a choice. We need to make certain that the choices are good ones, that they are fairly available to all, and that they provide, as much as possible, real paths into the mainstream of American society.”

But Orfield and the report’s conclusions have been disputed by charter school advocates, who say the researchers at the CRP reached their conclusions by misusing the data.

Specifically, according to Nelson Smith, president of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, the numbers used to measure how well charter classrooms are integrated unfairly compare charter school demographics to those of entire metropolitan area school systems.

The result, Smith wrote on the alliance’s website is “a remarkably shoddy job.”

“Where we brim with pride at the million or so minority parents who choose to send their kids to charter schools,” Smith said, “the CRP — well, it pretty much ignores them. Where we know high-quality charter schools are addressing a profound civil rights issue — the denial of educational opportunity — the CRP sees them as part of the problem.”

CHARTERS OR MAGNETS?

One area in which the CRP report most heavily criticizes the efforts of many charter schools is the claim that they are exchanging more choice for parents and students for more segregated classrooms.

“We know that choice programs can either offer quality educational options with racially and economically diverse schooling to children who otherwise have few opportunities,” Orfield says in his foreword, “or choice programs can actually increase stratification and inequality depending on how they are designed.”

Among the many pages of statistics in the report, some about the St. Louis area stand out. Missouri law allows charters only in the cities of St. Louis and Kansas City. The 18 charter schools in the city of St. Louis enroll about 8,200 students, or 2 percent of the total enrollment of the entire metropolitan area, which includes school districts in the suburbs. (The latest state figures show St. Louis public school enrollment as 26,108.)

Of the population of charter school students, in the 2007-2008 school year, 87 percent was black and 9 percent was white, compared with 27 percent black and 69 percent white enrollment in the area’s traditional public schools. (In comparison, 81 percent of students in the St. Louis public schools are black.)

Two other telling statistics: In the St. Louis area, 83 percent of the charter school students were in schools that were between 90 and 100 percent minority, compared with 13 percent of the students in public schools.

Orfield, who was active in shaping and analyzing the St. Louis area desegregation program in the 1980s, said in an interview that he realizes charter schools are in areas with a large minority student population, so he doesn’t necessarily expect the racial makeup to be the same as that of the traditional public schools in the metropolitan area as a whole.

But, he says, he wants to make sure that stronger efforts are made to ensure that charter schools don’t contribute to the resegregation of classrooms.

“There are a lot of good people in charge of charter schools,” Orfield added. “I just don’t think this issue has been raised for them.

“We’re not saying every charter school needs to be diverse. We are saying there should be policies that say they should be diverse.”

He also says it is somewhat ironic that a movement like charter schools, which began as a way to provide more choice for parents who want alternatives for their children’s education, should wind up being less integrated than many of the public schools they are competing with.

“Our view is that schools of choice that are receiving public funds should be subject to the same civil rights laws and goals,” he said. “There is no reason to favor one form of choice over another.”

In particular, Orfield would like to see choice programs concentrate more on magnet schools, which he says have been shown to be more diverse and more successful academically, than on the expansion of charters.

“There’s lots of research, but no data, to show that charter schools are superior,” he said, “so if they are not superior but are more segregated and don’t have civil rights policies, why not change things around so there are more elements of choice? This seems like a no-brainer to me.”

And if charters are the choice of government officials, he said, they need to pay more attention to the racial makeup of the classroom.

“The civil rights laws haven’t been repealed,” Orfield said, “and the constitution hasn’t been changed. The laws are still there. There are people in the Obama administration who are serious about this. If they are going to pump more money into the system and encourage states to have more charter schools, they ought to attach serious civil rights requirements.”

CHARTERS RESPOND

Officials with the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education had no comment on the CRP report. But Cheri Shannon, executive director of the Missouri Charter Public School Association, noted that the geographical limits placed on charter schools in the state inevitably lead to the racial separation that the report cites.

“You can’t cross district boundaries,” she said. “It’s only Kansas City and St. Louis, so that is going to paint a very skewed picture of the school populations.”

Shannon noted that because charter schools are required to have open enrollment, they have no say over the makeup of their student bodies.

“We cannot discriminate on the basis of race, so our applications are neutral when it comes to race, to income or anything else,” she said.

“Schools don’t make a conscious effort to recruit all white kids or all black kids or all Hispanic children or all Asian children. I don’t know how you get around that, because you’d be in violation of the law.”

Her first reaction when she read the CRP report, Shannon said, was that as far as the charter schools in Missouri are concerned, the results are purely a result of demographics. She said that efforts to expand charters in the state are concentrating on removing the geographic restrictions, so families anywhere can take advantage of the charter option.

“Missouri is the only state that has geographical caps,” she said. “Lots of them have numerical caps — in New York, for example, there can be only 100 charter schools and that’s it, but they can be anywhere.”

Earl Simms, state director for the Children’s Education Council of Missouri, also pointed out that as the law is written, charter schools in the state have no discretion over who enrolls; instead, the student body is determined by lottery.

His group is working for expansion of charters in the state, to give parents more options over where to send their children. He said that if charters are expanded, the racial makeup of each school is likely to become more diverse.

“We’re supporting charter expansion in order to give parents another option for their child,” Simms said. “If they feel a charter better for their child, great. If they feel that traditional schools are better for their child, that’s great too.”

CECM was interviewed for a story by the St. Louis Beacon on a UCLA charter study which concludes that charter schools are leading to resegregation.

Click the link here to read the entire story.

Race to the Top Op Ed Published

earl — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 20:39:59 +0000

The CECM OpEd, Race to the Top Application Incomplete without Charter Expansion, has been published the publications below. Logos are links to each story.

St. Louis Post Dispatch

Columbia Missourian

St. Louis Globe Democrat

Education Equality Project

Southeast Missourian (Cape Girardeau, MO)

Springfield News Leader

Race to the Top Application Incomplete Without Charter Expansion

earl — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 19:51:39 +0000

In mid-January Missouri applied for nearly $750 million of the U.S. Department of Education’s $4.35 billion ‘Race to the Top’ program. The competitive grant program, which was announced on July 30, 2009 by President Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, aims to bolster states which are seeking education reform initiatives which improve student achievement.

While there is no question that Missouri Commissioner of Education, Dr. Chris Nicastro, and her staff worked hard to complete the application since announcing their intention to seek such funding, that application can only be described as incomplete without a push for expanding charter schools in Missouri.

Currently, Missouri has a geographical cap on charters that only allows them to operate in, and accept students from, the St. Louis and Kansas City public school districts. This policy is in direct conflict with Secretary Duncan’s strong statement last June that “states that do not have public charter laws or put artificial caps on the growth of charter schools will jeopardize their applications under the Race to the Top fund.”

To not include this vital reform in Missouri’s Race to the Top application defies logic, especially in the wake of Governor Jay Nixon’s announcement during his State of the State speech that his proposed budget falls short of fully funding the state’s education formula by $87 million. Governor Nixon, along with Dr. Nicastro and the State Board of Education, all signed off on the application before it was submitted.

The state also essentially was given a warning shot on its current education policies by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation when Missouri was rejected for a $250,000 grant to help with its Race to the Top application. In all, 25 states received Gates Foundation help with their applications, states that now are perceived as early front-runners to receive the first round of much-needed dollars.

Missouri’s application, relevant to charters, focused only on increasing accountability for both schools and sponsors. This is a good step to ensure that only quality charter schools are operating in Missouri. No one wants unregulated or unaccountable charter schools operating in the state.

However, this still falls short of reforms that need to be made in order to seriously compete for this unprecedented pot of money. At least four states, namely California, Massachusetts, Nevada and Tennessee, have held special legislative sessions or made their first legislative priority the passing of reforms in order to become more competitive in this race.

Despite the fact that charter expansion was not pushed in Missouri’s Race to the Top application, it should remain a top goal of education reformers during the 2010 state legislative session. Thankfully, the winners of Round One are scheduled to be announced in April, giving Missouri’s legislature time to pass serious reforms before the end of its current session should the state not receive funding from the first round of the program.

Missouri’s education leaders still have time to analyze and react to the U.S. Department of Education’s feedback before Round Two applications are due in June. Without reform efforts that almost have been labeled by Secretary Duncan as pre-conditions for winning funding, Missouri’s Race to the Top could be over shortly after beginning.

Charter School Expansion Gains Steam in Legislature

earl — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 20:43:45 +0000

Fresh on the minds of Missouri education reformers during the 2010 legislative session will be legislation to expand charter public schools in Missouri. The original legislation passed to allow charter schools in Missouri limited them to opening, and accepting students, only in the St. Louis and Kansas City public school districts. There is a new movement this session to lift the geographic caps on charter public schools, fueled in part by President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s $4.35 billion Race to the Top competitive grant program.

Secretary Duncan has specifically said that caps on charter schools, whether numerical or artificial, will significantly harm a state’s chance at receiving these grants. Possibly due to this program, some unlikely supporters of charter expansion are seeking to file bills during the 2010 legislative session. With Missouri’s budget constraints it is no mystery why legislators should aggressively help Education Commissioner Dr. Chris Nicastro compete for part of this pool of money.

Adding additional pressure to give parents more options is the merging of the unaccredited Wellston and provisionally accredited Normandy school districts in St. Louis County. Riverview Gardens is also unaccredited and located in St. Louis County, and there are seven other provisionally accredited districts in the state. To say families in these districts need options besides their failing district schools is an understatement. There are also interesting concepts for charter schools coming from private schools that would like to charter so that parents of all income levels could have a chance to attend. One private French language immersion school in Columbia testified last legislative session for expansion so that they could change to a charter school.

One less discussed reason for allowing charter schools statewide is to reduce the number of consolidations in rural areas of the state. If a rural district is losing enrollment and considering consolidation, they would have the option to charter instead of families in the area losing a school close to home. That would also stem job losses of teachers in the proposed consolidated districts.

Regardless of the motivation, charter school expansion should be a top education priority for legislators during the 2010 legislative session. It will give parents and students more options in more areas of the state for their child to receive a quality education. The presence of charter public schools can also lead to better results from zone district schools as a result of competition or collaboration. The Children’s Education Council will continue to monitor charter school legislation during the 2010 session and support bills that allow for expansion of quality charter public schools giving more options to families across Missouri.