The opening of Virginia’s latest charter school (one of only four operating around the state) has been nothing but a roller coaster ride, not to mention a textbook example of the more-often-than-not contentious relationship between school districts and their charter schools when districts hold all the cards under a weak charter law:

Since the start of their dance with Richmond Public Schools (RPS) in the spring of 2008:

- Patrick Henry was forced to go through the RPS approval vote process three times

- Patrick Henry was initially left out of this year’s RPS budget

- Patrick Henry is to be held to higher standards than other RPS schools, but will receive 21 percent less funding

- Patrick Henry was “generously” granted leased space from RPS at a cost of $1 per year - facilities which came with a crippling renovation price tag of close to $1 million

Enough already?

Apparently not. Yesterday, a school more than 2 years in the making, one that will offer families a longer school year and a curriculum focus not available in traditional Richmond schools, was faced with the possibility of being on the receiving end of one more hit - the potential refusal by RPS to hire their first principal just as the final preparations for their inaugural school year get under way.

More “The hits just keep on coming”

The teachers’ union “strongly supports charter schools“.

The nation’s two largest teachers unions talk up their support of charters, but their actions tell a different story. The successful charter concept is rooted in autonomy and accountability  - that, folks, is not what’s in the fine print on the union label.

As entrenched and deep-pocketed political behemoths, the unions’ first line of attack is against charter school legislation and laws themselves, seeking to prevent their passage or implementation (as they did successfully in Washington), to get strong laws watered down into weak ones, or to have them killed in the courts (as they tried to do in Ohio). In state after state, however, the courts have upheld the constitutionality of charter school laws against union plaintiffs. So…

If the unions can’t kill a bill outright, they seek to limit authorizing authority to local school boards, majorities of whom they often already have in their pocket. It’s a fact that 52 percent of the nation’s charter schools are authorized by local school boards, but states in which the local school board is the sole authorizing body account for only 604 of the nation’s 4,600 charter schools.

More “Charter School Mythbusters #4″

Charter Schools take money and resources away from public schools.

“Taking money away” is a misnomer. When kids leave systems that do not meet their needs, money should leave. But it’s not leaving public education, it’s just moving to meet the public’s needs in a different way.

When a child attends a charter school, they are attending another legally created public school which a state’s education revenues are intended to support. And when money follows a child, other public schools in that state benefit from the renewed focus that money changing hands brings about – the idea that schools are set up for the benefit of students, and that their needs should drive services, not the other way around.

More “Charter School Mythbusters #2″

“There are too many lousy charters out there.”

While one bad school is one too many in any sector, some who suggest lousy charters exist do so with the purest of intentions but often the faultiest of data. They believe that by standing up for quality and against poor performance, they are demonstrating a commitment to accountability and avoiding a kind of “double standard” criticism by the establishment who get offended when reformers say too many conventional public schools are failing. If they admit publicly that their own movement has flaws and undertake what they believe are corrections, then policymakers and opponents will take the charter concept seriously, see them as serious reformers and good policies as well as eventually only good schools will exist.

But saying there are bad charter schools without an intensive look at data – below the surface of even what publicly released AYP scores say and do – ignores their real progress and achievement. And isolating the purpose of charter schools to only one of their three intended effects – quality schooling – ignores the other major two, and equally important effects charters were created to address: parent choice and competition.

More “Charter School Mythbusters #1″

More of the Same at Twice the Price

The National Education Association has prepared a vital tool for anyone interested in assessing the potential impact of the economic stimulus bill on education in the U.S. As major media figures have pointed out in the last several days, the stimulus bill is nothing more than additional funding for the education programs and structures that already exist, regardless of efficacy. And the NEA’s drawn up the charts to prove it. (Notice that reform efforts currently implemented at national and state levels, like charter schools and No Child Left Behind, are completely bypassed.)

Both Senate and House versions nearly double funding of all major programs, such as Title 1 – funding which flows to school districts, where it subsidizes existing staffs and programs. While this may help state and local administrators avoid laying off teachers, it is not tied to student achievement, ensuring that all monies spent simply prop up schools that exist, rather than boosting schools that succeed (NCLB links funding to results, but this pay out comes before the next meaningful achievement assessment, and thus is not tied to accountability). The same is true for the multi-billion dollar school modernization program, for special education and for myriad other program increases.

Also not lost on the status quo supporters of this bill is the fact that there are administrative set-asides at the federal, state and local level. What’s 1 percent of $100 billion? That’s right — government will grow by $1 billion, at the minimum, thanks to this effort. That doesn’t even take into account higher education stimulus funds, another $40 billion or so of which is included in this bill.

There’s also LOTS of money for researchers – the National Science Foundation gets several million more, as does the Institute for Education Sciences. Some discretionary funds (we call it play money) – about $340 million – are also in place for the Secretary to spend as he sees fit on “innovative” programs. But shouldn’t innovative or successful new programs simply draw funds equitably and directly from all federal appropriations (rather than being shunted through the federal-state-local system, with a little – or a lot - being siphoned off at each bureaucratic stop)? Why must “innovation” be separately accounted for in a slush fund, when such reforms are mainly responsible for all the achievement gains of the last decade? And as a result of a decade of reforms, the nation already knows how to succeed in educating children – we simply lack the political resolve to make the hard choices. So why more research in this time of economic crisis? Oh, that’s right. It’s about the jobs of adults, not the education of children.

Consideration of whether or not our current education programs work is missing from the creation of this bill altogether – when it should be the central concern. For years Washington’s representatives fought accountability. NCLB began to shed light in that dark corner. Subsequently ignoring the vetting of programs’ effectiveness before shelling out hard-earned taxpayer dollars is not the way to bring about change and fix failing schools. Which, not incidentally, is the long-haul, big-picture solution to getting – and keeping - our economy back on track for good.

Check out the NEA analysis yourself. We’re glad to finally make use of the taxpayer dollars we give them through mandatory dues payments to see where it’s all going – if the status quo has its way.