Madfloridian's Journal - Louisiana school superintendents are starting to fight back against forced charter schools

A change in Louisiana law last year is forcing local school systems to pay for many new charter schools whether they like them or not. The battles are heating up in many states as public schools see their money disappearing.

Charter school funding under attack

School superintendents are starting to fight back. Last month, superintendents flooded the state with letters of complaint directed at three proposals to create strictly online charter schools that in two cases would draw students from all over Louisiana. The superintendents submitted a range of complaints, including the involvement of for-profit companies in these would-be cybercharters, and whether these schools can comply with a raft of state laws.

The complaints prompted the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education to postpone consideration of these cybercharters and several other charter school proposals until December.

A key underlying complaint of the superintendents is concern about how the state will determine who pays for these new schools. The law change is also at issue in a Union Parish lawsuit scheduled to reach a Baton Rouge courtroom Thursday.

Until June 2008, the state solely paid the cost for these charter schools, known as Type 2 charters. Charter schools are exempt from many of the normal requirements imposed on public schools in hopes that they will serve as educational laboratories.

Louisiana was a target for the Educational Management Organizations EMOs that are often the management of charter schools. It was an easy target after Katrina destroyed so much of that city, it is easy to move in and set up.

Deregulation, New Orleans Schools, and the Kindness of Strangers

In the meantime, the small change merchants of greed have come to New Orleans and other urban centers, where charter schools are replacing most of the public schools that were blown up by natural disasters (Katrina) and by manmade disasters (NCLB). These bottom-feeding greed merchants of the ed industry have been handed the schools to exercise their marketing savvy and their business acumen, where oversight of accounting practices (test scores) are non-existent and protection of consumers (children and parents) is nowhere to be found. And, of course, due process and decent benefits for workers (teachers) is a thing of the past.

As reported in the Times-Picayune, edu-entrepeneurs are out canvassing the Wal-Mart parking lots around New Orleans looking for families with children of school age, preferably non-poor 6th graders without learning difficulties or other special needs. And no one wants fourth graders or eighth graders in particular, since children in these grades have to take the high-stakes LEAP test, and where the peristaltic bulges of failed children are the largest. (See chart from the Times-Picayune).

Interesting comment from the article linked in that blog. It is called "Schools scramble for New Orleans students"

. . .Beabout promised confidentiality to principals he interviewed. One, he said, spoke of wanting to serve families from the middle-class neighborhood surrounding the school. The principal sought to win accreditation for a prekindergarten program specifically with this in mind.

"We had our initial meetings . . . to work on a (national) accreditation because that's a big thing with all these young little yuppie . . . moms and stuff, I want to" attract, the principal told him.

But it appears the school districts will have to go along with the DOE if they want a share in the 4.3 billion in extra money in discretionary spending that Arne has been given.

Today Obama was speaking and warning schools not to fight the changes. It is my understanding the federal government can not force the merit pay or charter schools, but money like that that can be very convincing.

Meanwhile Obama only offers Race to the Top money to those who have those charter schools...as well as merit pay.

The proposed guidelines for the federal government's Race to the Top program have been available since summer, but Obama said the real competition will begin once states can start competing for those grants. States can't do that until the federal government releases the final applications for Race to the Top in a few weeks.

"We're putting over $4 billion on the table - four billion with a 'B' - one of the largest investments that the federal government has ever made in education reform," he said. "But we're not just handing it out to states because they want it. We're not just handing it out based on population. It's not just going through the usual political formulas. We're challenging states to compete for it."

Obama noted that Wisconsin has a law prohibiting using student achievement data to evaluate teacher performance, a law that makes the state ineligible for Race to the Top.

On Thursday, the Wisconsin Legislature is expected to pass a bill that will eliminate that firewall, as well as bills that would encourage high standards for charter schools and allow for the sharing of student data between K-12 and post-secondary institutions.

The states are going along to get the money. Even if they had rules in place, they are giving them up for the money.

Other school boards and superintendents are waking up to the fact that this money going to charter schools is coming from their public schools. Seems like a little too late.