A Tale of Two Charter Policies

Kentucky has zero charter schools, Tennessee has many but what does it mean?

Tennessee has moved aggressively to privatize-by-charter since a state law allowing charter schools was first passed back in 2002.

The past decade has seen a particular focus on charter schools as a way to provide opportunities for students from low income backgrounds.

Kentucky, however, has zero charter schools and a judge there recently found that charter schools do not meet the definition of “public schools” for the purpose of state education funding.

The states have taken different approaches – and the results suggest that Tennessee just might be on the wrong track.

What’s happened in the intervening 10 years? Has Tennessee closed the gap with Kentucky when it comes to economically disadvantaged kids?

Actually, no.

In both 8th-grade math and reading, the gap with Kentucky has expanded. Tennessee trailed Kentucky by 2 points in 8th-grade math in 2013 but now trails by 7. In reading, Kentucky went from being 2 points ahead to being 6 points ahead.

In 4th grade in both math and reading, the gap between the states remained the same (+3 for Kentucky in math, +8 for Kentucky in reading).

Turns out, another decade of pushing for privatization has not helped those Tennessee kids most in need of help.

train in railway
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Hillsdale Keeps Coming Back

Already approved in Rutherford County, Hillsdale-affiliated charter network tries again in Madison, Maury counties

It seems American Classical Education, a charter school network affiliated with Hillsdale College, is not satisfied with having a charter school in just one Tennessee district.

Tennessee Lookout reports:

American Classical Education, a Hillsdale College-affiliated charter school network, resubmitted amended applications in two of four counties that denied it earlier this year. 

School boards in Madison and Maury counties have until July 28 to review American Classical Education’s latest revision to its charter school applications. 

The Maury County School board will vote on the new applications at July 18 meeting. While school officials with the Jackson-Madison County School System said, its board would hold a special-called meeting before the July deadline to deny or approve the resubmitted application. 

The network won approval of a charter school to open in Rutherford County in 2024.

However, school boards in Madison, Maury, Montgomery, and Robertson rejected the Hillsdale applications.

In Maury County, the initial vote was 6-5 against Hillsdale. So, if the charter backers can simply switch one vote, they could see approval of a second Tennessee charter school.

Here’s what the Mayor of Maury County’s largest city has to say about Hillsdale:

Winning a second (and possibly third) charter school could put Hillsdale well on the way to the 50 charter schools Bill Lee promised in his 2022 State of the State Address.

And if the local school boards don’t approve the appeals, Hillsdale can still appeal to the State Charter Commission, whose members have all been appointed by Lee.

Why does Hillsdale want so desperately to operate charter schools in the Volunteer State? Money.

The charter network would be financed by state education funds and local property tax dollars – both enriching Hillsdale and driving up education costs for local school systems.

For more on education politics and policy in Tennessee, follow @TNEdReport

Phil Knows the SCORE

Nashville investigative reporter exposes agenda of leading school privatization force

Phil Williams of Nashville’s NewsChannel5 is one reporter who is not afraid of a tough story.

This time, he’s following the path of a nonprofit group that raises millions of dollars a year and is associated with former U.S. Senator Bill Frist.

The group: Tennessee SCORE – SCORE stands for Statewide Collaborative for Reforming Education.

Williams is on the story of how SCORE is aggressively promoting the expansion of charter schools as the panacea for the state’s education woes.

Never mind that SCORE has been driving the state’s education agenda for more than a decade.

Williams notes that education advocates are warning about SCORE’s plan – supported by Gov. Bill Lee – to bring at least 50 new charter schools to the state in the next 5 years.

And not just in Nashville and Memphis, where charters are already an alarming part of the landscape.

This plan would create charter schools in suburban and rural districts.

It’s similar to a scheme being advanced by Michigan-based Hillsdale College to open at least 50 Christian Nationalist charters in the state.

As Williams notes in a follow-up piece, charters don’t always have the best record of academic achievement. In fact, in many cases, charter schools perform worse than the district schools where they operate.

Maybe that’s why SCORE is moving quickly to help the privately run, publicly funded schools game the state’s new funding formula – TISA.

And just a reminder – SCORE takes in tons of money every year and advances an agenda that seeks to undermine the state’s public schools:

Jeffrey F. Lin/Unsplash

For more on education politics and policy in Tennessee, follow @TNEdReport

Charters All Around

Pro-charter propaganda machine Tennessee Firefly is out with the story of a bevy of new charter school applications across the state.

The story that’s gotten the purveyors of privatization so excited is that as of now, there are 23 “letters of intent” from charter operators planning to open schools in districts across Tennessee.

As Firefly notes:

School districts across the state received 23 letters of intent this month for applications to open new public charter schools next year. That’s the first step potential charter operators must take before submitting their formal application by February 1, 2023.

The letters of intent include proposed schools in four counties that do not currently have public charter schools and they’re coming from both existing charter operators in Tennessee and those who were rejected this year.

The applications come from a range of operators, including Christian Nationalist Hillsdale College – a group out of Michigan seeking to open schools in five Tennessee counties – Madison, Rutherford, Montgomery, Maury, and Robertson.

Should these charter schools be approved, they will undoubtedly lead to local tax increases.

The move comes at the same time Gov. Bill Lee and his privatization allies are seeking to expand the state’s fledgling school voucher program.

For more on education politics and policy in Tennessee, follow @TNEdReport

Lawmaker Shocked that Gov. Lee Means What He Says

Gov. Bill Lee has been shocking policymakers and pundits for a long time now simply by telling the truth about his school privatization agenda.

At a recent legislative hearing, lawmakers – some of whom supported creating the Tennessee Public Charter School Commission – expressed surprise that the law they passed back in 2019 actually does what it says.

https://twitter.com/TheTNHoller/status/1575487115722227712?s=20&t=OrTFinies5Ueh76rY-s27w

Gov. Lee has been saying this since BEFORE he was even a candidate for governor.

Now that his policies are potentially impacting their districts, policymakers are starting to pay attention. Still no indication they’ll actually do anything to stop it.

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A Warning on Privatization

This article originally appeared in The Progressive.

In 2012, Tennessee’s began a scheme known as the Achievement School District, or ASD. The goal was simple and bold: Take a handful of schools in the bottom 5 percent of student achievement, according to state test scores, and move those schools into the top 25 percent in student achievement in just five years.

This miraculous shift, officials claimed, would be accomplished by placing schools under a new state agency, which would then determine an intervention strategy that might include turning a standard public school over to a charter operator. Any school anywhere in the state would be eligible, so long as it was on the “priority schools” list. As a whole, the schools would be governed by their own “district,” complete with a superintendent who reported directly to the commissioner of education.

Tennessee’s commissioner of education at the time, Kevin Huffman, hired charter operator Chris Barbic to run the new district. Barbic’s arrival coincided with the takeover of a first cohort of schools by the ASD, along with the unveiling of his plan to generate the expected turnaround.

So what was that plan, exactly? 

Well, of course, it was to turn all the priority schools over to charter operators. After all, Barbic reasoned, other charter school leaders would know just what to do with entire schools from urban districts with high levels of entrenched poverty.

But the charter school plan had another, more sinister impact. Tennessee’s charter school law gave charter operators ten year charters from the granting district. Since the ASD had taken over the local schools (most of them in Memphis), the ASD was now the charter-granting district. Now, schools in the ASD would not be eligible to return to their home districts for ten years, rather than the five years envisioned in the initial ASD legislation.

By executing the charter switch, Huffman and Barbic had immediately doubled the amount of time they would have to produce results with their education experiment, even though both of them would be gone by the time the ten-year period was up.

Still, the plan was bold and its promises were big. Almost immediately, there were problems. 

Some charter operators dropped out, and new operators swooped in. A series of directors attempted to run the rapidly sinking ship.

There were even Thunderdome-like contests early on to decide which schools would be handed over to charter operators, despite parent and community objections.

In 2020, New York City math teacher and popular blogger Gary Rubinstein, who tracked the ASD from its inception, reported the ASD’s “initial promise” to take over the bottom 5 percent of schools and “catapult them into the top 25 percent in five years” had “completely failed . . . . Chris Barbic resigned, Kevin Huffman resigned, Barbic’s replacement resigned.  Of the thirty schools, they nearly all stayed in the bottom 5 percent except a few that catapulted into the bottom 10 percent.”

When Barbic resigned after just a few years on the job, Chalkbeat reported, he “offered a dim prognosis” on the fate of the ASD. “As a charter school founder, I did my fair share of chest pounding over great results,” he wrote. “I’ve learned that getting these same results in a zoned neighborhood school environment is much harder.”

Still, the ASD muddled forward. Now, the failed experiment is at the end of its run. Multiple groups of students have traveled in and out of charter doors with the end result being disruption, displacement, and discouraging results.

As the tenth year runs out, questions remain about exactly how to transition the schools back to their districts. Funny, it always seemed so easy to just move students and their families to charter schools and then to other charter schools as reformers scrambled to manipulate student populations in search of ever-elusive results. 

Even so, it seemed as if the ASD had reached its end.

In March, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee, a Repubican, announced yet another plan to continue the district. More specifically, Lee wants to allow a handful of his personal favorite charter operators to continue to manage some select ASD schools. 

Not content to let a really bad idea die, Lee is backing legislation that would allow some schools to move from the ASD to the jurisdiction of the state’s relatively new Charter School Commission. That Commission was created by Lee in his first year as governor in order to circumvent the rejection of charter schools by local school boards.

Another piece of legislation, which has stalled for now, would allow Lee’s commissioner of education to take over an entire district by firing the director of schools and replacing the elected school board. This circumvention of democracy was widely seen as a way for Lee to send a message to the outspoken school boards in Memphis and Nashville that they’d better fall in line or else.

Of course, it hasn’t been lost on observers that Memphis and Nashville are suing the state, challenging the adequacy of the school funding formula. While the legislation is on hold for now, the point is clear: Districts are to do what the governor says and stay quiet when they disagree.

In fact, at a recent press event discussing the use of federal stimulus funds by local districts, Lee suggested that the state’s department of education would be watching districts to ensure they spent the money the right way. House Education Committee Chair Mark White went one step further, saying that he would be expecting tremendous jumps in student performance in exchange for this money. 

Education advocates around the country should beware these sorts of moves—power grabs cloaked in the guise of “assistance or guidance,” legislation to extend failed reform models, and/or the repackaging of proven reform failures as something shiny and new.

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Charter Schools, William Lamberth, and Math

I’ve written recently about Governor Bill Lee’s Charter School Slush Fund and how the funds are beginning to be distributed across the state. This money is dedicated to capital improvements and is available exclusively to charter schools, many of which not only receive BEP funds from local districts but also benefit from support from private funders.

Interestingly, House Majority Leader William Lamberth has been a proponent of capital investment funds for fast-growing districts like Sumner County, where he lives. He’s even sponsored legislation that would provide a mechanism for these districts to access funds. The legislation has failed to advance because of a price tag of just over $18 million.

So, if Lamberth is really focused on securing state funds for capital investment in the district he represents, he COULD suggest that Sumner County convert all of its schools to charter schools. That way, they could access the Charter School Slush Fund.

Based on current enrollment numbers, the Charter School Slush Fund provides roughly $285 per student for charter schools. If every single school in Sumner County became a charter school, the district could access over $8 million in capital funding from the state.

State law specifically authorizes local districts to convert existing schools to charters. TCA 49-13-106 provides:

(g)  A public charter school may be formed by creating a new school or converting a school to charter status pursuant to this chapter.


(3)  An existing public school may convert to a public charter school pursuant to this chapter if the parents of at least sixty percent (60%) of the children enrolled in the school, or at least sixty percent (60%) of the teachers assigned to the school, support the conversion and demonstrate such support by signing a petition seeking conversion, and if the LEA approves the application for conversion. The percentage of parents signing a petition must be calculated on the basis of one (1) vote for each child enrolled in the school.

So, instead of Lamberth running his capital improvement bill next session, he could simply ask the Sumner County School Board to convert their schools to charters. That way, they’d be sure to be on Governor Bill Lee’s radar AND they could access monies from the Charter School Slush Fund.

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Bill Lee Doesn’t Trust Your School Board

Governor Bill Lee gave his State of the State address last night and outlined his budget and vision as he begins his first term. Among the items he discussed was the creation of a state charter school authorizer.

Nashville Public Radio has more:


Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee is proposing legislation that would make it easier to establish charter schools.
He announced the plan Monday night during his State of the State address. If it passes, it would allow a sponsor to go directly to a state-run authorizer for approval, instead of a local school district.

The proposed change is significant because current law requires a charter operator to submit a proposal to a local school board first. The local board then evaluates the proposal and makes a decision as to whether or not it would be a good fit for the needs of students in the district. If the local board rejects the proposal, the operator may appeal to the State Board of Education.

The State BOE often looks to the local board’s evaluation of the charter application for guidance. Sometimes, operators revise and improve the application. Sometimes, the State BOE determines the local board made a sound decision based on the evidence, as was the case with Rocketship in Nashville not long ago:


Let’s review. Rocketship was denied expansion by MNPS and the State Board of Education last year. Rocketship applied again. MNPS denied them. Rocketship appealed. MNPS denied the amended application by an 8-1 vote. Rocketship is now appealing based on a technicality instead of working with MNPS to find a satisfactory way to address concerns.

Here’s what MNPS said when they reviewed the Rocketship application:


In summary, with no additional state accountability data to consider, and no compelling evidence presented that provides confidence in the review team, converting an existing low-performing school before Rocketship has demonstrated academic success on state accountability measures would not be in the best interests of the students, the district, or the community.

If Governor Lee’s proposal is successful, schools like Rocketship will now be able to circumvent local input altogether. In this case, MNPS identified key problems with Rocketship and decided an expansion was not in the best interests of the students of the district.

Why shouldn’t charters be required to present a proposal to a local board of education first? Shouldn’t the citizens of a community, by way of their duly elected school board, be able to weigh-in on the appropriateness of a given charter school proposal?

Moreover, why doesn’t Bill Lee trust local school boards?

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Fueling Error?

The Tennessean reports a tax lien has been filed against Rocketship Charter Schools in Nashville.

Here’s more:

National charter school operator Rocketship Public Schools owes more $19,000 in unpaid federal taxes, prompting the Internal Revenue Service to file a lien against the company in Nashville.

Rocketship Public Schools officials said the issue is tied to a clerical error by the third-party payroll provider it uses nationally. The charter school operator runs schools in Nashville, California, Wisconsin and Washington, D.C.

The property lien was filed with the Davidson County Register of Deeds in early January against Rocketship Education Wisconsin Inc. The organization’s residence is listed in Redwood City, California.

It’s not yet clear how the property lien may impact the school’s Nashville operations. An earlier report noted one new Rocketship school is closing due to low enrollment.

Rocketship has also faced challenges with expansion plans, having been denied by both the MNPS School Board and the State Board of Education.

For more on education politics and policy in Tennessee, follow @TNEdReport


 

Weber, Hawkins, & Rogen Take On The Charter Debate

I wanted to highlight three good blog posts about charter schools that came out this weekend from those for and against charter schools.

This weekend the Tennessean posted an article about how two charter schools acquired bonds from the Nashville government to help fund the cost of renovating or building new schools. Seeing how MNPS does not give money for charter facilities, charter schools have to find ways to fund remodels, expansions, etc. As the Tennessean previously reported, the city of Nashville is spending millions for renovations and land for new buildings for traditional MNPS schools.

  • $46 million for the renovation of Hillsboro High School, the second part of an $86 million makeover
  • $10.2 million for land acquisition for Hillwood High School’s relocation to Bellevue
  • $9 million for land acquisition for a new school of the arts

Charter schools don’t have the luxury of the Mayor funding new buildings for them, and many traditional schools have to wait years and years to get renovated or a new school. Two charter schools used perfectly legal measures to gain bonds from the city of Nashville, and that made some anti-charter elected officials upset because they didn’t know it took place.

This was just another attack on charter schools that blogger Vesia Hawkins calls the “Summertime Strategy.”

The grand plan to dismantle charter schools is becoming more clear, particularly with the partnership with certain reporters, asinine accusations resulting from “intense scrutiny” of lease agreements (somehow there’s time for this), and let’s not forget the targeted personal attacks on certain charter school leaders—so far, only on those of color. See my recent post about Shaka Mitchell (who, as of last week, is no longer with Rocketship), Ravi Gupta, and John Little.

I mean, Rocketship attacks have been on repeat for a year now, so no surprises there, but Purpose Prep? Purpose Prep, the elementary school that intentionally seeks out students from the North Nashville area and operates with the expectation that every child will be eligible for Martin Luther King, Jr. magnet high school and, ultimately, the college of their choice. Purpose Prep, a school in its third year of existence with a student population comprised of 98% students of color, 74% economically disadvantaged and nearly every child is reading at or above grade level. So, what’s the problem here? (Shout out to Lagra Newman and her team!)

TC Weber, who is no fan of charter schools, wants to know how this latest attack solves the problem of families flocking to charters:

My position on charter schools is well documented. I believe wholeheartedly in the power of public education as a cornerstone of our democracy. But, I am baffled by people who can recognize the futility of the drug wars and its basis in attacks on the suppliers who fail to see the paralles playing out in the fight for public education. Repeatedly attacking suppliers while ignoring why there is demand is a strategy that has demonstrably failed to achieve success in the drug war and offers a preview of what to expect if we employ the same strategy in the fight against charter school proliferation. If we don’t address demand, parents will continue to search out alternatives regardless of how had we try and paint that alternative.

Earlier in the year, several hundred Antioch HS students staged a walkout over conditions in their school. An action that was never oppenly addressed by the school board.

Last week I recieved documentation that shows over 60 teachers have left Antioch HS this year and that the Principal non-renewed 10 more. I’m told that they have roughly 115 teachers total. After the student walkout Dr. Joseph held a restorative justice circle with the teachers. They told him that if he didn’t do something about the principal he was going to lose a lot of teachers. Joseph’s reported response was that the principals was not going anywhere and the teachers could either get on the bus or get run over by the bus. Antioch HS is not the only school in the district facing huge teacher turnover – Sylvan Park, Warner, Overton, Joelton, to name a few. I ask you, which story, charter school building finance or high teacher turnover,  do you think has greater impact on student outcomes?  Which story has the ability to affect charter growth? If I’m a parent in a school with that kind of teacher turnover and my only choice is enrolling in a school that appears more stable but uses dubious means to fund its capital investments, where do you think I’m going?

We need to be asking why parents are heading to charter schools and make changes so that parents don’t want to leave their zoned school. Teacher and blogger Josh Rogen addresses this very issue in his latest blog post. Josh does a great job graphing numbers to show a clear picture of why some families decide to leave a traditional school. He breaks down the achievement of schools based on the percentage of students of color in the school.

The answer is clear. If you are a Black, Hispanic, or Native American parent, and your zoned option is predominantly Black, Hispanic, or Native American, your best option is to send your child to a charter school if you value their overall growth, excellence, and the culture of the building they are being educated in.

In fact, if you are sending your child to a school with 80%+ Black, Hispanic, or Native American, you can basically throw a dart at any charter school in Nashville and be confident that you are doing much better than your zoned option. (That bottom one is Smithson Craighead, which is getting shut down. Closing bad schools…an interesting idea.)

On the other hand, middle-class white people are not touched by charter schools, and so they don’t support them. I will say that it is awfully easy to hate charter schools when you have a good zoned option. It’s a lot harder to oppose them when your child is locked into a failing school because of their zip code. A little empathy might change the conversation.

Josh hits on something about middle class people who are not touched by charter schools. I recently ran across a comment that TC Weber wrote that said,

It’s really easy to fight for public education when your kids are not the ones sitting in the seats at our poorest schools. I’d love to look around and see all these education warrior’s children’s sitting in seats next to my kids and perhaps then we could get equity.

I also saw a comment someone made that said it was a “disgusting insult to the teachers, students, and parents in the system” when someone was disparaging MNPS. If that is what some people think, the same should be true for charter school. There are students, teachers, and families that have decided to work and/or send their kids to a charter school. The conversation has now turned into one where one cannot speak ill of MNPS and one cannot speak good things about charter schools. We need to have these conversations about both of them in a more collaborative way.

Instead of spending time attacking charter schools, we should be working to improve our district so that families don’t feel the need to leave their zoned school. 374 parents sent a letter to the school board about these attacks, but the board never responded to those concerns. The silence shows that the board doesn’t want a dialogue with charter school parents. If we want to improve our district, we must communicate with all parents.

So let’s come together and figure out why parents are leaving for charters. I don’t know if it’s already been done, but each parent should fill out a short exit interview when they withdraw their student for a charter. Let’s start focus groups with these parents. Let’s do more to find the concerns, fix the concerns, and see what happens. We already know what some concerns are: literacy rates, ACT scores, and behavior. 

Let’s spend more time listening and collaborating instead of attacking. As a teacher, I want success for all students. All students includes students who attend private, home, magnet, charter, or traditional public school.

For more on education politics and policy in Tennessee, follow @TNEdReport and @zbarnes