Charter school group pushes for more schools in Massachusetts cities

Charting next course
(By Boston Herald Editorial Staff)

Charter school advocates helped score a victory for education with the passage of the 2010 reform law, which lifted the cap on charter schools in struggling school districts.

But the leaders of the charter school movement weren’t finished there, nor should they be.

For starters, the forces aligned against them, hell-bent on waging old wars, are still trying to undermine charter schools legislatively. A bill that would require a local referendum before a new charter can be awarded is pending on Beacon Hill, for example, along with the usual efforts to mess around with charter school funding.

And of course the 2010 law was a compromise, which lifted the cap only in those school districts with the lowest MCAS scores.

So the Massachusetts Charter Public School Association has announced an initiative to lift the cap altogether — which is the logical next step — as well as to push for better educational opportunities for more kids in the commonwealth’s 24 so-called “gateway cities.” They’ve hired John Schneider, who through his work at the Massachusetts Institute for a New Commonwealth has focused like a laser on addressing the needs of cities like Lowell, New Bedford and Pittsfield, to lead the new effort.  (Read the rest of the editorial in the Boston Herald)

Charter schools facing more scrutiny in Chicago

If the past decade was defined by a remarkable expansion of charter schools in Chicago, the next 10 years might ultimately be about accountability. The state last week released detailed performance data for city charter schools for the first time, revealing that many schools from even the most prominent charter networks struggle to close the achievement gap for low-income students.  Read more in the Chicago Tribune.

Tennessee May Take Responsibility for 68 Underperforming Memphis Schools

Memphis, Tn - The state identified the bottom 5 percent (85 schools) of the schools in Tennessee. 68 of the 85 are in Memphis. The federal government accepts is considering a plan for the state to take responsibility of these schools.

If everything goes as planned, those 68 Memphis city schools will become what is called "the Achievement School District," a state run district with its own superintendent, Chris Barbic. There are four options the Achievement School District can choose for the underperforming schools: The school can be left alone, it can be turned into a charter school with leadership and curriculum independent from Memphis City Schools, it can be controlled jointly by MCS and the state, or the state can come in and take over completely. Read more on My Fox Memphis.

State May Take Responsibility for 68 Underperforming MCS Schools: MyFoxMEMPHIS.com

Avoid past mistakes in Michigan charter school expansion

Dan Varner

By John Austin, president of the state Board of Education, and Dan Varner, a member of the state Board of Education and director of Excellent Schools Detroit.

The Michigan Legislature looks committed to pass charter and school choice expansion legislation, going even further than proposals made by Gov. Rick Snyder this spring. Given the likelihood of passage, it is important that this legislation as proposed be improved to prevent the same mistakes that were made when public school academies were first created, and that have continued to polarize debate on this issue ever since.

John Austin

When public school academies were first enacted in the 1990s, there was a massive fight. The fight was largely won by Gov. John Engler and charter proponents, and Michigan ended up with one of the more freebooting charter school regimes -- any school district, intermediate school district or community college can sponsor an unlimited number of charters. The plan did, however, include a cap of 150 on the number of university-sponsored charters, those institutions at the time that were most eager to facilitate charter school expansion.

As a result, the charters that have been created run the gamut from the good (innovative schools that help students achieve in new ways), to the bad (mediocre or poor-performing schools that don't offer anything different except a label), to the ugly (schools created essentially as fronts for management companies to make money, without the same transparency and accountability of public school). Read more in the Detroit Free Press.

Education unions' lobbying rises in Michigan amid changes

Teachers' unions and some other education-related groups in Michigan have increased their spending to lobby state officials in 2011, largely in response to sweeping changes in school policy and budget cuts adopted by the Republican-led state Legislature.

The Michigan Education Association, the state's largest teachers' union, reported lobbying expenses of $324,197 for the first seven months of the year, according to state records. The Michigan chapter of the American Federation of Teachers reported expenses of $119,748. That's a combined increase of about 11% compared with the same period in 2010.   Read more in the Detroit Free Press.