SABIS and founding board members celebrate the approval of International Academy of Camden charter

Camden, NJ: On December 17, 2012, friends, supporters, and founding board members of the recently approved International Academy of Camden joined with staff of SABIS Educational Systems at the Camden Adventure Aquarium to celebrate the charter granting by the NJ Department of Education. The International Academy of Camden was one of two, out forty-nine applicants, to be approved by the Department during the past round of charter approvals. The International Academy intends to open fall 2013.

Brockton residents, officials show up to support or oppose charter school

Jenn Pham, a SABIS graduate and freshman at Stonehill College, speaks in support of SABIS

By Alex Bloom
Enterprise Staff Writer

BROCKTON — Many local residents passionately defended the city’s schools as state officials considered both sides of a debate to open a charter school in Brockton.

More than 100 supporters and detractors of a plan to open a 1,200-student charter school turned out for a public hearing to comment on the proposal, which needs the approval of the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education.

Brockton High School Senior Lidia DeBarros, 18, was moved to tears defending the high school’s English Language Learner curriculum, which helped her learn English in less than a year-and-a-half after she arrived from Cape Verde.

DeBarros left the program and achieved top scores on MCAS tests, and is now looking at colleges.

“It taught me so much in so little time and these teachers still help me everyday,” DeBarros said.

Mayor Linda Balzotti, chairwoman of the School Committee, spoke passionately against the proposal, saying that it would pull top students out of city schools. She said Brockton is a place where education is a priority and leaders are focused on improving learning at all levels.

“In Brockton, we get it,” Balzotti said. “We know we have challenges to overcome, but we work together to meet those challenges head-on.”

Two board members and the state’s deputy education commissioner listened for two hours to dozens of speakers discussing the charter, which would be managed by the private, for-profit SABIS Educational Systems Inc. Local legislators joined many city councilors and School Committee members at the hearing.

Former Mayor John T. Yunits, who is part of the nine-member board of directors seeking to bring the charter school to Brockton, saw firsthand the achievements of SABIS in its Springfield school. He said the school, which will have students between kindergarten and eighth grade, would serve a population that mirrors the population in city schools.

“They agreed with me that if they came to Brockton it would be a complete lottery,” Yunits said. “There would be no differentiation.”

He had the support of at-large City Councilor Jass Stewart, a two-time mayoral candidate, who talked about his childhood experience in Dallas with mandatory busing that allowed him to get into a talented-and-gifted program.

“Frankly, anytime there is credible choice on the table, I will always be pro-choice,” Stewart said.

In 2008, the state board voted to reject a similar proposal, which also would have been contracted with SABIS.

Jose Afonso, director of U.S. Business Development for SABIS, said that the meeting’s speakers did not accurately describe his company’s record. He said SABIS does good work at schools in Holyoke and Springfield, where at-risk students are learning.

“Closing the achievement gap is an area that we’re very proud of,” Afonso said.

But the majority of speakers spoke out against the charter proposal, including John Condon, the city’s chief financial officer. Condon described how the charter school would impact funding. Condon responded to Afonso, who pointed out that Brockton is the state’s only Gateway City without a traditional charter school.

“I would submit that that is a a credit to the city – not a problem,” Condon said. “The reason it is a credit to the city is I don’t believe a charter school is necessary in Brockton.”

Parent Tammy DeAndrade talked about how the new charter could hurt Cape Verdean students. The city’s schools have recruited staff to specifically help the city’s large Cape Verdean population, she said.

“The services provided by these programs for the Cape Verdean community will not be provided in the SABIS schools,” DeAndrade said.

The board will vote in February on the charter proposal.

The Irrational Fear of For-Profit Education

Opinion, by Frederick M. Hess
Wall Street Journal
December 18, 2012

McGraw-Hill recently announced plans to sell its education publishing division to Apollo Global Management for $2.5 billion. The deal is a reminder that K-12 schooling is a $600 billion-a-year business. In 2008, schools and systems spent $22 billion on transportation, $20 billion on food services and even $1 billion on pencils.

These transactions typically elicit only yawns. Yet angry cries of “privatization” greet the relatively modest number of reform-minded, for-profit providers that offer tutoring or charter-school options to kids trapped in lousy schools. Gallup surveys show that more than 75% of Americans are comfortable with for-profit provision of transportation and facilities. Barely a third are fine with for-profits running schools.

This bias shows up in federal legislation that bans for-profit ventures from competing in the U.S. Department of Education’s Investing in Innovation Fund. When New York legislators lifted the state’s charter-school cap in 2010, they placated unions by banning for-profit charters. Most recently, the reform-minded group Parent Revolution has pushed for legislation prohibiting parents who have invoked the “parent trigger”—through which they can vote to reconstitute a failing school—from joining with for-profit charter-school operators.

This state of affairs is highly unusual, notes John Bailey, executive director of Digital Learning Now. In areas like health care, clean energy and space exploration, “policymakers do not ask whether they should engage for-profit companies, but how they should.” NASA set aside $6 billion to support the private development of spacecraft. SpaceX built its “Dragon” capsule, capable of transporting humans and cargo into space, for $800 million—less than 10% of the $10 billion NASA had spent trying to build a model.

Critics charge that for-profits are distracted by the demands of investors, while public systems can focus solely on the children. Yet the vast majority of K-12 spending goes to pay employee benefits and salaries. Meanwhile, school boards and superintendents have accepted crippling benefit obligations and dubious policies to placate employees and community interests. In a 2010 national survey by the American Association of School Administrators, 84% of superintendents said that their districts were cash-strapped—but less than one in three said they had considered trimming employee benefits or outsourcing custodial services or maintenance.

The watchful eye of investors can lend for-profits a healthy discipline. The prospect of returns means that promising profit-seeking ventures can offer employees lucrative long-term opportunities and can tap vast sums through the private-equity markets. For-profits have a relentless, selfish imperative to seek out and adopt cost efficiencies.

Nonprofits, by contrast, have little incentive to become “early adopters” of cost-saving tools and techniques such as online instruction. Such shifts upset relationships with vendors and routines for staff. Even enormously successful nonprofits such as Teach for America and the KIPP charter-school network tend to grow far more slowly and show much less interest in squeezing their cost structures than comparable for-profit ventures.

Between 1996 and 2011, the number of for-profit charter schools nationwide increased to 758 (with nearly 400,000 students) from six (with 1,000 students). That’s still less than 1% of the 50 million students enrolled in K-12 schools. In higher education, by comparison, for-profit providers enrolled 2.4 million students in 2010, or more than 10% of total postsecondary enrollment.

The record of private ventures in education, to be sure, is mixed. The incentive to cut costs can translate into a willingness to cut corners. The urge to grow can lead to deceptive marketing. These are legitimate concerns that demand transparency and sensible regulation.

As it happens, McGraw-Hill’s $2.5 billion deal with a deep-pocketed, closely held investor was greeted with cool detachment. That ought to be the norm for the full range of much smaller for-profit ventures in the evolving world of schooling.

What once required a textbook can now be delivered faster, more cheaply and more effectively using new tools and technology. As schools, systems and suppliers respond accordingly, students will be well-served if educators, parents and policy makers recognize that public systems, nonprofits and for-profits all have vital roles to play when it comes to providing great schooling for 50 million children.

Mr. Hess, director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, is the author of “Cage-Busting Leadership,” out early next year by Harvard Education Press.

Dramatic evolution for schools in Lowell

By Kendall Wallace
Lowell Sun

December 3, 2012 

LOWELL -- The new charter school scheduled to open in Lowell this fall will have a dramatic impact on the future of the Lowell public schools as we have known them for more than 100 years.

The city was a leader in securing a good education for all going back to the 1830s. Lowell, as one of the country's first planned industrial cities, has an interesting history in public education.

The city's early school costs were mostly paid for by the mill owners. A major split, however, developed when local community leaders wanted to add a high school to the school system. The mill owners felt an eighth-grade education was adequate for the children of mill workers.

Led by the rector of Saint Anne's Church, who chaired the School Committee, the locals prevailed and voted to move forward with plans for a high school supported by taxpayers.

Thus was born, Lowell High School, an institution that became the first coed and first integrated high school in Massachusetts.

This was a bold step for citizens of that time.

The development of this new charter school, which will be run privately, without a lot of the union and traditional public-school issues that have made change difficult to effect.

The new charter school will open with more than 500 youngsters in grades K-5 and will add a grade each year until it gets to a full high-school level where it will have well over 1,000 students.

The private corporation that will run the school will receive from the state the same per-pupil allocation that the city of Lowell receives. Obviously, as enrollment for the charter school grows, the total funding going to the public schools will decline.

If you read the brochure on the new Lowell Collegiate Charter School, you can't imagine why a parent would not take a serious look at the new facility.

One, its corporate manager, Sabis International, has a proven record of success, particularly in urban areas.

Two, it talks about many of the issues parents care about: college-prep programs, student uniforms, character development, strong math and English focus, longer school days, a strict and clear code of conduct, high expectations/no excuses, parental involvement, before- and after-school programs, a tuition-free public school, run by a board of directors.

I've had the opportunity to know most of the key leaders in public education in Lowell for 50 years. Most have been pretty dedicated folks who have served on a school committee, in the school administration as principals and class-room teachers. I have a sense, however, they don't have a real sense of the dramatic changes about to happen in their lives and in the lives of students and parents in Lowell's public schools.

I also know the local citizens who have spent years looking at this charter-school plan. They, too, are well-meaning people and feel this is the right course to ensure every student has the best possible chance to succeed.

Sabis has worked in nearby Springfield, where last year its 123 graduates earned $9 million in scholarships and all 123 went to college.

With good, well meaning people on both sides of these dramatic changes, I'm not sure why I feel so edgy about the project. Maybe it has come on too fast. Maybe there has not been enough discussion? It certainly sounds like a dream come true for parents looking for an alternative, but where does all this leave the traditional public schools?

Maybe I need to do some more home work.

The Buzz in the Bay State

From Edspresso:

Earlier this week, Edspresso shared how Brockton, MA’s school super is “Trashing Charters on Company Time.” Now Matt Malone is poised to become Massachusetts’ next Ed Chief. Will his opposition to charters continue in his new role, or will he come to see the light as the former Brockton superintendent, Basan “Buzz” Nembirkow did – the man who led the charge against a strong charter application back in 2008?  Check out Buzz’s change of heart on SABIS and for-profit EMOs from a recent Pioneer Institute panel on Oct 8th:

“I think it’s [SABIS] an excellent model for all instruction. We use the word differentiated instruction today, but how can you differentiate instruction if you don’t know where the kids are?”

“Class size is a myth; an absolute myth.”

“When I looked at the SABIS model, the instructional model is sound.”

“It’s a whole lot easier [for districts] to do what has always been done and blame somebody else.”

“SABIS has done a good job of taking what works best and putting it together, dealing with training teachers and administrators so there is a unified system.”

“From my perspective on schools, SABIS is a good model.”

Question from Jim Peyser, former Massachusetts Commissioner of Education: “Given the SABIS school in Springfield was a strong school, why wasn’t that good enough for you [Buzz] to support them coming to Brockton [in 2008]”?

Answer from Buzz: “My title was Superintendent of Brockton Public Schools, so right off the bat there’s an enlightened self-interest involved in that…. Basically, the issue was finance and politics. It had nothing to do, or very little to do with the quality of the [SABIS] program.”

“When SABIS came [to Brockton] we saw it as a financial threat. Simply as a financial threat. It took money away from us, which was about $4-5 million. Based upon that, our progress in BPS would have been substantially affected.”

“So my job defending the Brockton Public Schools, as the Superintendent, was to do whatever I could to stop that particular threat at that time, so we mounted a very good political campaign.”

“Almost 90% finances” was the reason Buzz cited for opposing the SABIS school application.

Peyser asked panelist: “So, for profit charter management: who cares or deal-breaker”? Buzz responded: “I have no issues with that.”