KOCH Brothers lose on voucher ballot lawsuit in Arizona

The Governor of Arizona signed a voucher bill and public school supporters filed a ballot measure in response. Public school supporter gathered thousands of petitions to require the state to put vouchers to a vote of the people. American Federation for Children and other voucher support organizations filed a lawsuit to invalidate the petition drive. The judge ruled in favor of the voters. The voucher expansion vote will be on the ballot, if it is not overturned on appeal.

Florida’s Constitutional Revision Commission has filed P.4 to remove constitutional restrictions to fund private schools. This proposal will be on the ballot in Florida on November 6th. Help get out the vote to oppose the attacks on our public schools.

KOCH Network $400 Million Strategy to Disrupt Education

The agenda for the conservative Americans for Prosperity and other education reform minded groups was outlined at their donor seminar. Ground zero for reform is Arizona, but the measures are appearing in the Florida Constitutional Reform Commission proposals and the Florida legislature. They include:

Expanded educational savings accounts. Florida has the Gardiner Scholarships now for children with severe disabilities. The Florida House is proposing similar personal scholarships for low performing third graders in public schools. In these programs, parents choose private tutors and classes: create their own micro schools. They are called Personal Reading Scholarships that will be funded for parents to choose private tutors or other services outside the public school system.

These Reading Scholarships are for public school students, to be used outside the school system, and they will be administered by the private agency that administers the Florida Tax Credit scholarships and the Gardiner and McKay vouchers.

Read the article.

Did Miami-Dade Suggest a Better Choice?

Suppose high performing districts could turn themselves into charter districts. They would be governed by the elected school board and freed from most state regulation for curriculum, facilities, and staffing. The State Curriculum Standards and assessments would be in place, teachers would be certified and be part of the State system, and school facilities would vary according to need.

The suggestion from Superintendent Carvalho is part of the draft Florida Senate bill 2508 now circulating, and an amendment P93 by the Constitutional Revision Commission member, R. Martinez. A different version of the concept was filed in the House: PCB 18-01 Will there be unintended consequences? No doubt! Is it a better direction than privatizing our schools and taking away local control from elected school boards? Yes. Is it better than what we have now with a one size fits all set of regulations? Maybe.

None of this well correct the test driven instruction due to the school grading accountability system. It will not solve the funding problem for school operations, but it might reduce facility cost. Of course, less expensive facilities may also mean less space, quality, and a proliferation of small, inefficient and therefore costly schools. The problems associated with inequity due to housing patterns remain. Problems associated with teacher recruitment are not easily solved if salaries are not competitive and teachers’ expertise is not valued. Districts will have to have the expertise and ability to make good decisions. Nevertheless, it might be a step in the right direction.

There is a difference between the House and Senate versions of this concept. The Senate keeps these charter districts under school board control. The CRC proposal P93 is more like the one in the Senate version. Both bills include many other provisions that deserve careful scrutiny.

At least this year, the legislature is airing these proposals early and getting feedback. They are, however, still tying concepts worth considering to those more controversial and destructive all in the same bill.

New Train Bill Emerging in Florida House Tomorrow

A draft education bill is circulating. It has a temporary number PCB EDC 18-01, but it is already over 100 pages long. It is the Florida House compilation of the many bills currently filed to expand the privatization of our public schools. The ‘bullying bill’ is not there, but there are some new wrinkles. Tomorrow, Thursday Jan 24th, the House Education Committee will hear the bill. It may be worth listening at 10am to figure out what is in it. Here is my take:

PUBLIC DISTRICT SCHOOL PROPOSALS: Basically these provisions reduce district control and/or invite chaos depending on your point of view.

  1. Revise district superintendents’ authority to organize schools. The bill provides that instructional personnel should be free from ‘burdensome regulations’. Provide a safety survey and emergency situation communication system.
  2. Give access to surplus district property to charter schools.
  3. Adding social studies content to ELA writing assessment prompts, and revising format to release FSA assessment questions and requiring paper assessments in ELA and mathematics is grades 3-8.
  4. Creating district-autonomous schools in which employers may be public or private. Public employees may participate in the Florida Retirement System.

CHARTER SCHOOL ORGANIZATION: These measures actually increase charter centralization, decrease termination criteria, and promote charter growth and expansion.

  1. Revising high performance charter school systems applications, weakening termination criteria by changing from ‘violations of law’ to ‘material violations of law’, changes district/charter dispute resolution to a final decision made by an administrative judge who will award cost payment to the prevailing party. Revising criteria for high-performing charter school status.
  2. Authorizing charters and management organizations in addition to districts and post secondary institutions to provide school leader programs, and renaming and expanding Principal Autonomy Pilot Program. Adds mandatory professional development for school leadership teams and provides a principal bonus of $10,000. Principals will be allowed to supervise multiple charter schools. School district or charter board members may not be employees of the school. Authorizing high performing charters to create two new charters per year.
  3. Funding and payment liability of independent school boards
  4. Exemption from laws of sections 1000-1013 Florida law allows schools that earn no less than a ‘B’ grade to continue exemption.

PRIVATE SCHOOL VOUCHERS: While some improvement is included to exclude people with criminal records from staffing private schools, a new scholarship program is proposed for students who score below a ‘3’ on the FSA reading test. It is funded by tax credits for new cars sold and is administered by Step Up for Children.
8. Deletes Florida Tax Credit qualifications for scholarships and includes any private school. Creates reading scholarship accounts which may be used for tuition, summer programs, tutoring and/or student services or to a college savings account. Expands requirements for private school web page information; requires Level 2 background checks and increased definition of ineligible employees with criminal records; provide independent financial audit for schools receiving more than $250,000 in state revenue. Provide DOE oversight
9. Private schools are not required to state whether they will reimburse dual enrollment costs to post secondary schools.
10. DOE oversight of education scholarship funds is increased.

Good News Bills to Improve Florida Education

Some legislators are truly focused on improving the management and oversight of Florida’s schools. Three cheers to each of them. Here’s a brief description of bills related to charters, capital outlay funding, ethics, early childhood education and community schools.

CHARTERS
SB 1690 Farmer. Requires principals and chief financial officers of charters to have valid third party certification. Given the importance of principals in schools’ success, it is important that principals have knowledge of educational issues, instructional strategies, operations, funding, and management. Top Priority Support

SB 1672 Farmer. This bill gives districts the discretion to share local discretionary capital outlay funding with charters rather than requiring districts to do so. It also requires charter financing companies to have at least an A- rating, and the right of eminent domain does not apply to charters.
These provisions are important. The discretionary capital outlay issue is part of the lawsuit over the local control of districts to operate public schools. Millions of dollars of local funding will now go to privately owned charter schools. Florida’s charter closure rate is the highest in the nation with at least 300 closed. The buildings are retained by the private owners.

Charter bond ratings are at risk because many have low initial payments at high interest and large balloon payments at the end.

HB 6047 Charter Schools Newton, Berman. Repeals certain capital outlay funding for lab schools. Deletes provisions stating charter schools are eligible for capital outlay funding and that Schools of Hope are considered charter schools and may not use capital outlay for purchasing facilities. Top Priority Support

ETHICS
SB 1750 Rodriguez. Ethics. Prohibits public officials from voting on bills that inure financial gain to themselves and related others. The legislature had changed the ethics rules to allow members to vote on bills on which they could benefit if they disclosed their interest and if the bill affected a ‘class’ e.g. a group of people rather than the legislator alone. Top Priority Support

EARLY CHILDHOOD
HB 1297 Brown. The bill strengthens early childhood programs by terminating those with repeated citations. High Priority Support

COMMUNITY SCHOOLS
HB 4331 Community Partnership Schools. This is an appropriations bill to support the University of Central Florida’s community partnership schools for $2,930,570. UCF is the partner with the Children’s Home Society community schools that bring wrap around services, after school programs, and parental education programs to public schools it sponsors in collaboration with local agencies and businesses. There are nine schools statewide that are being expanded to 17 public schools. Additional information to track this bill is located here.

Passidomo’s Mental Health Bill is not Rational

SB 1434 (Passidomo) was supposed to be about mental health programs for schools. It is now amended to be mostly about charters that take over low performing schools. Some of the language about capital outlay funding is better. It also slips in language about Florida Tax Credit Scholarships.

The bill extends the reach of charters beyond the takeover school zone. This is a ploy to recruit students from any Title I school whether or not it is low performing. The bill adds sweeteners by increasing access to Schools of Hope funding for extra services. The bill acknowledges that finding highly qualified principals to work in these Schools of Hope may be difficult. So, the bill allows a principal to oversee more than one school. These are now called ‘franchise schools’.

The bill slips in an expansion of the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship program. It redefines dual enrollment collegiate programs as ‘structured programs’. Now, FTC students can enroll in at least 30 credit hours of dual enrollment, and charters can contract directly with these structured programs that may be public or privately owned post secondary institutions.

Florida’s educational system is becoming a patchwork of fixes for a choice system that is not working for children. It is no longer even a system. Sorting through who is responsible for what and how well anything is operating is becoming impossible. Maybe that is the point.

The Education Committee did a ‘delete all’ of the original bill and inserted new language below:

  1. Charters take overs of low performing schools can include any students from a Title I school, not just those within a 5 mile radius.

  2. Districts must maintain facilities it owns that charters take over. Charters cannot use capital outlay to build new facilities, but they do receive capital outlay from the district.

  3. Charter take over schools located in district facilities may receive Schools of Hope funding for supplemental services.

  4. Franchise model charters are established in which the same principal can lead more than low performing school. The principal has authority to reallocate resources and personnel between schools.

  5. Eligibility for FTC Scholarships continues until a student graduates from high school or is 21 years old. Students from low performing schools have priority over other qualified students.

  6. District turn around plans can include an extended school day and/or a summer program.

  7. Collegiate programs for dual enrollment in FTC schools are redefined as ‘structured programs’. These programs can provide at least 30 hours of dual enrollment credit. While priority for courses that meet core courses or common prerequisites, it also may include elective courses. Moreover, the bill provides that the charter school may directly contract with the other post secondary institutions within and outside of the Florida College System may participate.

  8. Capital outlay funds from discretionary millage for charters must be used for facility construction, maintenance or improvement of a publically owned facility or if owned by a 501c3, the facility must revert to a publically owned entity if the charter closes. The formula for allocating the capital outlay for charters changes.

Games CRC Plays: It is dark behind doors, not sunny.

The CRC is making its own rules. According to CRC member Erika Donalds, the CRC operates like the legislature; it does not follow the Sunshine law. If they want to speak together secretly, they do so. Attorney General Pam Bondi, who sits on the CRC, stated that she personally does not engage in one-on-one talks with other commissioners.

Politico has taken an interest in the behind the scenes discussions about Erika Donalds proposals to amend the Florida constitution. Procedural issues continue plague the operation of the CRC which can invalidate the CRC proposals. Her proposals would end school board salaries, impose term limits, require appointed superintendents, and promote funding for private schools, and strip charter school authorization authority from local school boards.

Donalds is the Collier County School Board member who helped organize her own school board association, separate from the Florida School Boards Association. The membership of this alternative group has ties to a charter school chain operated by a private religious college in Michigan. She and her husband, Representative Byron Donalds, were founding board members of Mason Classical Academy charter in Collier County. Donalds has filed for a second charter. Shawn Frost, who is part of this group, has announced he will not seek reelection to the Indian River school board. It seems he expects to be appointed to the Florida State Board of Education.

Skullduggery Afoot With Charter Authorization

The original proposal, P.71, to amend the Florida constitution (by Erika Donalds) was to provide alternative ways to authorize charter schools in addition to local school boards. Now, Donalds has deleted the wording in her proposal P 71 and inserted the following:

The school board shall operate, control and supervise all free public schools within the school district…except for those authorized by the state charter school authorizing board, municipalities, charter counties, Florida college system and public universities as provided by law.

What state charter school authorizing board you ask? There is no such thing now. Charter counties?? They do not exist either, but the CRC proposal P. 93 by Martinez would create them.

All of this requires voters to amend article IX of the Florida constitution in November 2018. Our constitution specifies that Florida has a ‘unified system of free public schools’. Donalds, Levesque and Martinez would change that.

It is interesting that Patricia Levesque filed an amendment to P. 71 an hour after Donalds filed one. Levesque’s wording was more subtle. She eliminated the words ‘charter school’ and inserted ‘public schools’ in line 29 of the original proposal to amend the constitution. Basically, Levesque wants nothing to prohibit alternative public school authorization. Since charters are public schools, perhaps Levesque believes that voters will not notice that the amendment would strip local districts’ authority to authorize charter schools. After all, in theory and in law, charters are public schools. They are funded by the public and just happen to be owned and operated by private entities.

Will Miami’s New KIPP Charter Be Different??

KIPP in Jacksonville has not been a success story to brag about. KIPP Jacksonville charters expanded, but the school grades fluctuate up and down. The KIPP national spokesman acknowledged problems there.

Superintendent Carvalho says the Miami KIPP will operate differently. For one thing, it will co locate within a district-run school, Poinciana Park elementary. It will pay $1 in rent. Therefore, KIPP will receive the same funding as traditional schools without the same facility costs. Improvements in the KIPP side of the school are supposed to benefit all students, but nothing in the lease agreement guarantees it. It’s a ‘verbal agreement’. Board members fear it will be a “stark symbol of inequity“.

Poinciana was an ‘F’ school in 2016. Now it is an ‘A’ school even though only about 25% of the students scored at the proficient level on the English FSA exam. So what is to be gained by adding KIPP to the school? In a way, KIPP will operate as a magnet school, but with its own management and instructional methods, within Poinciana. Parents can apply to have children attend.

Absent in the discussion are the consequences of the well documented ‘no nonsense’ strict behavioral and instructional strategies of KIPP schools. For example, studies of KIPP policies indicate that grade 5 attrition is higher than at feeder district schools even though it drops later on. Moreover, KIPP tends not to replace students who leave. When new students are admitted, they have higher achievement scores than those initially admitted.

The net effect is that KIPP schools have fewer free and reduced lunch students, fewer students with exceptionalities, and somewhat higher achievement scores simply because of the selection and attrition policies. Moreover, the attrition rate for KIPP fifth grade students is nearly twice than in district feeder schools, according to a Mathematica study.

The children who remain in KIPP are with others whose parents want them there and will tolerate the highly structured, test driven curriculum. The Atlanta school district reports that KIPP students are in school from 7:30 to 5pm weekdays and select Saturdays. They also have two weeks of instruction in the summer. They tend more often than similar students to start college, but they have trouble completing college.

What is the KIPP difference? Push kids hard, give them more time in schools, and test scores go up. So, will this new school within a school be like a magnet school for struggling children? Kids will be separated into those whose parents aspire for their children to go on to college and those who do not.

The State cannot or will not support additional instructional time for all students. The result is that these ‘no nonsense’ schools pay the cost of providing more instructional time for students by continuously hiring inexperienced teachers. They compensate by reducing teachers to be drill sergeants; it is a business strategy.

Additional resources come out of teacher salaries and benefits. Teachers leave at twice the rate as district schools, but the rigid KIPP instructional method trains new teachers over and over again.

Even if this military style disciplined approach to learning and teaching produces higher test scores for students who survive it, does it produce the creative, problem solving, self regulated people our society requires? Each of us must ask if this is the learning experience we want for our own children, or is it just something to do for ‘other kids’? There are better ideas out there, but are we willing to pay for them?

What are the societal costs when children face double segregation by race and income in their neighborhoods and then face additonal discrimination in their schools? It must be a world that says over and over No Access.

Can’t Bully Kids into Learning

These Achievement First ‘no excuses’ charters are learning; they found out that they are not teaching kids how to learn. Achievement First charters discovered that their students, who learned how to pass state tests or left the school, could not succeed in college. Students have to be able to learn on their own, just as they are expected to do in college and as adults.

Achievement First runs 34 charters enrolling 15,000 students. Their highly structured discipline approach to behavior and learning is not working. The students are not engaged in school. In 2016, students at one school tried to tell them. They staged a walk out demanding fairer discipline and a more diverse staff. In 2015, parents filed a lawsuit claiming the Achievement First used inappropriate discipline and failed to provide needed special education services to children.

After seeing their alumni struggle, Achievement First is trying to make students more independent. They are running a couple of pilot tests in middle schools. Three times a year the students have an online expedition to explore their own interests for two weeks for three hours a day. Better than nothing. They are using something called the Greenfield model.

These no excuses charters can train students to pass tests, but students are not robots. The real key to success is to engage students through group based projects. These don’t have to be in every subject every day. They do, however have to be real-world problems that students can tackle together. This is how learning becomes meaningful.