Reason Foundation

Federal Public School Food Police Fine Utah School $15k for Leaving Vending Machine Plugged in During Lunch.

Posted on May 17, 2012, 1:05pm | Lisa Snell

As "The Blaze" reports: 

A Utah high school is learning the hard way that the government is serious about nudging students away from food it doesn't want them to consume. Davis High School in the Salt Lake City area is having to fork over a whopping $15,000 in fines to the Feds because it accidentally sold soda through a vending machine during lunch.

Federal law requires the school to turn off its soda machines during the lunch period, which is 47 minutes a day. And Davis High school did turn off the machines in the lunch room. However, the school didn't realize that there was another machine in the school bookstore that wasn't being turned off. And when the food police realized it, the school was hit with a $0.75 fine per student for the duration of the offense. 

And this is especially unfair because all the evidence suggests that soda and snack bans in schools don't work. As the Washington Post and many others have reported:

Jennifer Van Hook and Claire Altman looked at a sample of 20,000 students who began kindergarten in 1998, and checked in on their height and weight in fifth and eighth grade. They couldn't find any significant link between higher obesity rates and schools that allowed vending machines selling snacks and soda. "The results suggest that the sale of competitive foods [which compete with traditional school foods, such as soda and snacks] in school is unassociated with weight gain among middle school children," they write.

Policies that limit the availability of candy bars, chips and soda have become popular in recent years; 23 states place some kind of restriction on what foods can be sold in schools. Why does this study find that such policies don't necessarily reduce childhood obesity? A lot of factors could be at play. Students that don't have access to soda in schools tend to increase their consumption of sugary drinks at home, a 2011 study in the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine found.

In addition, it turns out that like everyone else school kids are good at developing black markets when soda and snacks are banned. As this article explains: LA school district lunch program spawns thriving junk food black market. 

Green Dot Charter Schools Raise Performance for Long-Suffering Locke High School

Posted on May 14, 2012, 4:10pm | Lisa Snell

Reason first told the story of the struggle of Locke high school parents and teachers to have their school run by Green Dot charter schools in the Drew Carey piece: Education Revolt in Watts.

Now there is good news out of Locke high school. Students are doing much better on multiple indicators under Green Dot management. As this new UCLA study reports:

Students at historically low-performing Locke High School in South Los Angeles, which recently was transformed into five smaller charter schools, are now performing better than their traditional-school peers in a number of key academic areas, according to a multi-year study conducted by the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing at UCLA (CRESST). 

CRESST's evaluation, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, looked at two groups of ninth graders who started in 2007 and 2008 - just after the charter-school group Green Dot Public Schools assumed operational control of Locke from the Los Angeles Unified School district and initiated a series of major curriculum and faculty changes. The UCLA researchers followed the students for three years. 

The study found that the Green Dot Locke students were more likely to stay in school, to take and pass important college preparatory classes, and to score higher on the state high school exit exam on their first attempt than students at demographically similar high schools in the LAUSD. The study authors called the transformation of Locke "an impressive success story" and found that the charter had achieved "consistent, positive effects on a range of student outcomes." The UCLA CRESST evaluation is ongoing. 

The full UCLA report is here.

And Fast Company has an extensive story on the news and other positive results at Locke:

Rather than centrally manage every school, each Green Dot charter is run like a startup: the staff is given broad discretionary powers over finance, faculty are given the reins to innovate with new curriculum, and the union contract is performance-based rather than a guarantee of minimum work requirements. To maintain its unusual level of collaboration, a Green Dot overhaul physically splits schools into autonomous units of around 500 students (in some cases, by using chicken wire for temporary walls).

A UCLA-Gates Foundation study released today shows that Green Dot's prescription is paying off, with 25% higher graduation rates (80% vs. 55%) and 35% higher college readiness (48% vs. 13%). Green Dot even managed to bring sanity to one of LA's worst schools, Locke, where rival gangs maintained control over bathrooms and students regularly set hanging artwork on fire.

Green Dot was able to achieve these positive results without cherry picking students and they were able to have better outcomes while enrolling students in more challenging classes. 

And as Dr. Jay P. Greene recently argued when we look at gold standard randomized studies charter school benefits are proven by the best evidence.

24 High-Performing Los Angeles Unified Schools Plan to Become Charter Schools

Posted on May 14, 2012, 3:35pm | Lisa Snell

In "The School District is Dead, Long Live the Schools," I wrote about the emerging trend of high-performing traditional schools converting to charters schools  to get more flexibility and control of their financial resources. This growing trend is distinct from the traditional trajectory of charter schools that have developed to serve students in poor performing public schools. Los Angeles Unified is embracing this trend. As the Los Angeles Times reports:

Two dozen high-performing Los Angeles schools are seeking to become charter campuses in search of more money and increased flexibility.

The list reads like an honor roll of academic excellence. Every school has surpassed the state's target score of 800 on the Academic Performance Index, which is based on standardized tests.

Although many of the schools considered the move in hopes of greater funding, campus officials said they also began to see the benefits of increased freedom over such things as curriculum, testing and schedules. "Finance is one key factor but not the only one," said Jose Cole-Gutierrez, who directs the charter school division of the L.A. Unified School District.

The interesting twist is that Los Angeles Unified appears to be encouraging these schools to become charters. This again begs the questions are central offices and school districts going to become obsolete?  Why not have all charter districts like New Orleans? As I said in the earlier Reason piece:

The bottom line is that charter schools give school leaders, teachers, and parents much more control over staffing and finances while also freeing them from the economic consequences of belonging to a district that has been in financial distress for decades. A school district may become financially bankrupt, but individual schools can live on through the charter school process. It raises the question: As a nation, should we continue to support large school districts at the expense of individual schools and students?

Philadelphia Schools to Follow New Orleans Market Education Lead Without a Hurricane?

Posted on April 25, 2012, 11:44am | Lisa Snell

Philadelphia plans to revolutionize its school system by closing schools, moving to an all-charter or autonomous school district, ditching the central office, and privatizing school services with outside vendors.

As the Philadelphia Inquirer reports:

So, at the SRC's direction, Chief Recovery Officer Thomas Knudsen on Tuesday announced a plan that would essentially blow up the district and start with a new structure.

The plan - subject to public comment and SRC approval - would close 40 schools next year and 64 by 2017, move thousands more students to charters, and dismantle the central office in favor of "achievement networks" that would compete to run groups of 25 schools and would sign performance-based contracts. . . .

Forget the command-and-control district structure. It's archaic and it doesn't work, officials said.

Instead of orders coming from a large central office that runs 249 schools, much of the power would be concentrated in the new achievement networks.

Those would represent "a breaking-apart of the district," Knudsen said. They would be "a group of people who choose to do business with the SRC and the central office to run" from 20 to 25 schools organized either by geography or by some other theme.

Successful principals or district staff could apply to run an achievement network. So could charter organizations, or universities, or a combination of those groups.

Principals would answer to the achievement networks, although they would remain district employees. The achievement networks would have contracts with the SRC, and would have to meet performance goals or risk being replaced.

The achievement network structure "creates an entrepreneurial approach, a flexibility, a nimbleness, a willingness to experiment," Knudsen said.

The current academic divisions - formerly called regions, clusters, and districts - will be gone as of this summer. Pilot achievement networks will be in place this fall, with a formal rollout in 2014.

Schools would have much more autonomy, with the ability to choose their own curriculums.

Though there is some precedent for this kind of work - officials pointed to the decentralization in New York City public schools - Ramos noted that what Philadelphia is proposing "is different from what many other places are doing."

The central office, already half the size it was a year ago, will shrink further, from over 1,000 employees a few years ago to about 200 in the new model. 

This model has been working well in New Orleans where more than 80 percent of students are in charter schools without a central office and in several other districts that have decentralized control to the parents and the schools. Philadelphia is moving toward the sea change in school governance and school funding that is happening across the United States.  More than 30 "school funding portability" funding systems are funding students through a student-based budgeting mechanism in cities like New York, Baltimore, Denver, Hartford and Cincinnati. In 2011, Rochester, Newark and Boston have moved to full weighted student formula systems where the money follows the child. Los Angeles Unified is moving from 100 pilot schools being funded based on per-pupil basis to all 800 schools funded based on where the student enrolls. In Louisiana, 7 school districts are piloting a student-based budgeting system, including the largest school district in the state, Jefferson Parish, with 50,000 students. New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Indiana have all recently changed their statewide school funding systems to a state formula where the money is attached to the child. These kind of systems support a level playing field for charters and district schools and do not give schools a residential advantage. 

There are many interesting details of the plan at the Philadelphia Inquirer so read all about it here.

New Orleans is Already Demonstrating What will be Possible When We Open Up School Markets

Posted on April 19, 2012, 1:44pm | Lisa Snell

As Fast Company reports not only is New Orleans the most market-oriented education system in the United States but it is becoming an open-source platform to test and nurture new innovative education ideas from teachers that are attracting large investments from venture capitalists.

"If you're an edtech entrepreneur who wants to pilot an idea, you have the most efficient and smartest market in the country here," says Matt Candler, CEO of 4.0 Schools. That's because instead of a centralized bureaucracy, there are more than 40 schools making independent decisions on both hiring and procurement. Organizations like KIPP, Teach for America, and the Gates Foundation have established beachheads, drawing top teachers and fresh blood from all over the country. These are intersecting with a nascent startup scene dubbed "Silicon Bayou" to produce a hothouse of ideas to change education: for-profit and nonprofit, from school redesigns to apps, often from younger, female entrepreneurs.

This is why Neerav Kingsland the chief strategy officer of New Schools for New Orleans has the most important message ever for everyone who works in the public school system. In "An Open Letter to Urban Superintendents in the United States of America" he writes:

In the following letter I aim to convince you of this: the single most important reform strategy you can undertake is to increase charter school quality and market share in your city--with the ultimate aim of turning your district into a charter school district.

In other words: rid yourself of the notion that your current opinions on curriculum, teacher evaluation, technology, or anything else will be the foundation for dramatic gains in student achievement. If history tells us anything, they will not be.

Read the whole thing to learn so much more about why we should be replicating New Orleans in cities across America.

Caine Monroy: The New Poster Child for School Choice in America

Posted on April 19, 2012, 1:29pm | Lisa Snell

The New York Times chronicles the compelling story of Caine Monroy an inspiration to kids and adults alike:

On an industrial street lined with auto repair shops, there are few signs that this is the home of an Internet sensation. But slow down at the end of the block, just off the freeway in eastern Los Angeles, where a 9-year-old boy has created a makeshift arcade in his father's auto parts store with balls, cardboard boxes and tape.

A few days ago, few people had heard of Caine Monroy, who worked for hours last summer in the store making simple games out of discarded boxes from the junkyard. Now, eager children, television crews and curious supporters stop by almost incessantly, captivated by an 11-minute film featuring Caine that has been viewed more than five million times on the Internet in the last 10 days. His college fund has ballooned to more than $170,000, driven by donations to a Web site created by the filmmaker.

Caine Monroy could also be the new poster child for school choice in America. While his story gives us all hope about what is still possible in America with entrepreneurial spirit, there is also a school choice angle--in that now Caine and his father can afford a private school or tutor to help Caine who struggles with reading. How many other kids like Caine Monroy are bright kids out there in our world and are going to schools that are not meeting their basic academic needs? Most will not be saved by a viral video.

Why Condoleezza Rice, Joel Klein, and the Council on Foreign Relations are Wrong About Common Core and National Standards and Why these Standards will Stifle School Choice in America

Posted on March 23, 2012, 2:41pm | Lisa Snell

In a new Reason commentary, I argue that Condoleezza Rice, Joel Klein and the Council of Foreign Relations are wrong about national standards and that they will impede school choice in America.

While the embrace of school choice by the commission is encouraging, adopting common core and national standards is actually counterproductive to competitive education efforts. Why embrace competition and then set an arbitrary national ceiling for academic standards that is sure to stifle or slow at least some of the academic innovation that would arise out of more competition in K-12 schools?

I explore this contradiction in the Council on Foreign Relations report and the evidence for school choice and against national standards.

In Louisiana the education money will REALLY follow the child.

Posted on February 28, 2012, 12:37pm | Lisa Snell

This is pretty significant. In many voucher programs there may be separate funding or appropriations for the program from the state, but in Louisiana the state board just voted to allow the state funding formula to follow the child to a private school. This means that the program could actually save money if private tuition is less than the public school cost and that schools will feel real competition as the money is attached to the backs of children. Since Louisiana has a robust charter sector and is working to allow student-based budgeting where the money follows the child to public schools, Louisiana is on the road to becoming a state model for education funding, where the money would be attached to children and the state would allow the parent to select between any public, private, or nonprofit school.

As reported in the Times Picayune:

Louisiana's new superintendent of education, John White, took a first step Monday toward opening the spigot of state and local tax dollars to expand the use of private school vouchers statewide. Gov. Bobby Jindal is pushing to expand a small pilot voucher program that's already up and running in New Orleans, hoping to offer aid to pay private or parochial tuition for low-income families across the state.

But the governor's office hadn't spelled out exactly how the state will pay for it. Money for the pilot program, running about $9.5 million this year, was approved as a special appropriation in the state Legislature.

But that may change beginning next school year. White, who took over at the state Department of Education last month with Jindal's backing, got approval from the state school board Monday to start paying for the vouchers in New Orleans by drawing from the same pool of money set aside for public schools.And that means if Jindal's proposal to expand the voucher program gains traction at the legislative session this spring, funding for it will already be in place.

Join Reason Foundation for National School Choice Week 2012 in New Orleans on Saturday, January 21

Posted on January 11, 2012, 1:17pm | Lisa Snell

You're invited to join Reason Foundation and other advocates of School Choice at the official kickoff event for National School Choice Week 2012 in New Orleans on Saturday, January 21, 2012.

First, the details:

Saturday, January 21, 2012

Lakefront Arena at the University of New Orleans

6801 Franklin Avenue, New Orleans, LA 70122

10:30 AM to 12:30 PM

RSVP online at http://www.schoolchoiceweek.com/official_kickoff

It's going to be a huge party, with musical performances by The Temptations and Ellis Marsalis , and thousands of likeminded students, parents, teachers, and community activists who are celebrating school choice across the country. In addition to these legendary entertainers, you'll hear from elected officials, celebrities, and students, parents, and teachers who will share how school choice has given them a chance at a quality education. In fact, if you represent a school choice organization, National School Choice Week will even provide you with a free table on our concourse to distribute materials on-site.

Reason Foundation is an integral planning partner for National School Choice Week (January 22-28, 2012), and we're so excited to invite you to attend this huge party and help raise awareness about school choice. And this is just the first party of the week! Between January 22-28, thousands of Americans will come together at seminars, rallies, schools, movies, and other places to shine a spotlight on the need for effective education options for children. 

Please RSVP online at http://www.schoolchoiceweek.com/official_kickoff and remember to invite your friends and family. Everyone is welcome to this massive celebration of school choice!

Charter Schools more like Vouchers: New Jersey Edition

Posted on November 16, 2011, 12:37pm | Lisa Snell

^{Legislation signed by Gov. Chris Christie will allow private schools in struggling districts to become charter schools. In this case it works just like vouchers where the money follows the child to the private school that the parent chooses.} 

^{Under the legislation (A2806/S1858), high-performing private schools can apply to the state education commissioner to make the change. Because charter schools receive public funding, parochial schools making the transition will be barred from religious instruction or displaying religious symbols.}

^{Christie said the law will help "ensure that more students are stepping into classrooms that will give them a better education and a brighter future." But he said the Democratic-controlled Legislature continues to stall other pieces of his education agenda, including school vouchers and merit pay for teachers.}

^{"These reforms must be taken up now; we cannot ask children in failing schools to wait any longer while these reforms sit untouched in Trenton," Christie said.}

Charter School Market Share: D.C. Edition

Posted on November 7, 2011, 12:18pm | Lisa Snell

According to the Washington Post, Washington DC charters may soon be the majority school system like New Orleans.  Charter students are gaining... #winning

October count came in at 46,191--that's down 419 students, about six-tenths of a percent-- from last fall's 46,515. That was when the District received a 1.6 percent bump over 2009.

The city's public charter schools continued their robust growth. The Public Charter School Board reported unaudited enrollment at 32,009--an 8.2 percent boost over last October's 29,557.

School District is Dead, Long Live the Schools: Oakland Edition

Posted on November 4, 2011, 12:57pm | Lisa Snell

In a new piece at Reason.com on the Oakland charter school revolution I tell the story of how charter schools are not just for low-performing schools anymore. Successful public schools want the charter advantage too:

The majority of charter schools have started in urban areas with long histories of trapping kids in failing schools and reflect the story line told in the documentary Waiting For Superman, where desperate disadvantaged children vie for their spot in the local charter school. In addition, there has been a larger trend towards low-performing schools being restructured as charter schools, as in the Detroit proposal to convert 41 schools to charters to offer kids higher-quality education and save the school district money. And New Orleans, where 80 percent of kids are now enrolled in charter schools, stands alone as a city that successfully built a charter school Mecca out of the ruins of disaster where the money now follows the kids to any school in the city. In all of these cases the charter school growth has the "hostile takeover" flavor of kids fleeing a failing public school system.

Ascend and Learning Without Limits flip that trend. These high-quality public schools want the charter advantage for themselves. They want relief from collective bargaining, from central office mandates, and most significantly from the huge school district debts that leave less money for the students. And these Oakland schools are not alone. For example, in March 2011, the Los Angeles school board approved the charter petition of El Camino Real high school, which holds the national record for U.S. Academic Decathlon championships and maintains top test scores in the district. This reflects an ongoing trend of Los Angeles schools opting for freedom from district regulations by shifting to charter status. In fact, at 80,000 students, Los Angeles boasts the most charter students of any district in the nation. After the school board vote, former Superintendent Ramon Cortines told the Associated Press that he expects the conversion trend to continue and foresees the day when the district's enrollment of 650,000 will plummet to 400,000.

A Sea Change for School Funding in America

Posted on October 21, 2011, 12:49pm | Lisa Snell

In the United States, we are in a great transition period, moving from funding institutions to funding students. K-12 education funding, across multiple sectors, is moving closer to how we fund higher education in the United States. We are moving away from a system funded by local resources and driven by residential assignment to a system where funding is driven by parental choice and put in the child's rhetorical "backpack."

At Learning Matters an affiliate of PBS Newshour, I make the case in an online debate on school funding  that "money should follow students." I reprise the my point in the debate below, but go to read the debate to see what other education experts have to say.

In 2011, there are now 26 school voucher and tax credit programs in 15 states with close to $1 billion in school funding following students to schools. There are more than 2 million students enrolled in charter schools with more than 100 cities with 10 percent or more charter-school market share. In New Orleans, for example, 80 percent of students are enrolled in charter schools with money attached to the student and following the student to the school of choice.

Taking this even one step further, with the growth of digital learning and the need to customize education at all levels, we are beginning to see examples where not only will school funding follow students to the school, but to multiple education-service providers. In Utah, for example, the Statewide Online Education Program allows high school students to select courses from multiple high-quality course options and multiple course providers, while still being enrolled in their public high school. The money follows the kids to the course selection. In April 2011, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer signed into law Arizona Empowerment Accounts. Empowerment Accounts allow parents - in this case, parents of special-needs children - to remove their children from the public-school system and receive the money the state would have spent on them in an education savings account. Every quarter, the state deposits up to 90 percent of the base support level of state funding into a parent-controlled ESA. Parents can then use that money to pay for a variety of educational options including private-school tuition, private tutoring, special education services, homeschooling expenses, textbooks, and virtual education, enabling them to customize an education for their child's unique needs.

Traditional public school funding systems at the state and local level are also adapting to a "school funding portability" framework where state and local funding is attached to the students and given directly to the institution in which the child enrolls. More than 30 "school funding portability" funding systems are funding student through a student-based budgeting mechanism in cities like New York, Baltimore, Denver, Hartford and Cincinnati. In 2011, Rochester, Newark and Boston have moved to full weighted student formula systems where the money follows the child. Los Angeles Unified is moving from 100 pilot schools being funded based on per-pupil basis to all 800 schools funded based on where the student enrolls. In Louisiana, 7 school districts are piloting a student-based budgeting system, including the largest school district in the state, Jefferson Parish, with 50,000 students. New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Indiana have all recently changed their statewide school funding systems to a state formula where the money is attached to the child.

As Indiana's Tribune Star reported "Of all the sweeping legislative changes coming to K-12 education, from private-school vouchers to performance-based pay for teachers, the one that may have the most impact is tucked inside the 270-page budget bill. It changes the way schools are funded, following a new formula to divvy up nearly $13 billion in K-12 education dollars. The new formula follows the mantra that "money follows the child." As Representative Ed Clere, who sits on the House Education Committee explained "The new formula is a "sea change" from the past. We're no longer funding schools. We're funding students."

In Louisiana Student-Based Budgeting Logical Extension of Charter School Movement

Posted on October 21, 2011, 12:30pm | Lisa Snell

In light of Saturday's state school board elections in Louisiana, The Pelican Institute's Kevin Mooney makes the case that "strong performing charter schools in the Recovery School District (RSD) make a compelling case for even greater decentralization in Louisiana's education system, according to the proponents of student based budgeting." This is especially true now that 80 percent of students in New Orleans are enrolled in charter schools where the "money follows the child" and student outcomes are moving in positive directions on multiple indicators from test scores to graduation rates. The Reason Foundation has been involved in a two year project to help the "money to follow every child" in Louisiana to the school in which they enroll.

As the Pelican Institute reports:  

Last November, the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) began studying the new budgetary concept at the behest of the state's Streamlining Commission.  Under current policy, state money is allocated to each school district and the district officials determine how much money each school receives. But there is a better way to maximize resources and direct money into the classroom, Lisa Snell, the director of Education and Child Welfare at the California-based Reason Foundation, said.

"We've learned from the charter school movement that decentralization has its advantages," Snell explained. "One of the problems we see at the federal, level and district level is that there are a lot of rules about how to spend money and principals are held accountable for student achievement. But the principals have very little input how resources are directed in specific instances. They should have more autonomy over how resources are aligned toward their school's instructional goals."

The idea behind student based budgeting (SBB) is for school dollars to be dispersed on a per-pupil basis and to follow individual students into schools where the principals determine how the money is best spent. Snell made the case for SBB last year before a BESE task force. She was joined by three other presenters from across the country who have successfully implemented the new budgetary method in their districts.

Matt Hill, an administrative officer for the Los Angeles Unified School District, told task force members that assigning financial resources directly to schools had allowed for each school to have greater flexibility to make specific decisions in spending, which in turn improved student performance. Jason Willis, a former budget director with the Oakland Unified School District, said some tasks are better suited to "economies of scale" at the central office, but most duties associated with "enhancements to learning" were better dealt with at the school level.

BESE has authorized a pilot program set to go into full effect next year that includes at least six different parishes: Jefferson, Sabine, Terrebonne, Assumption, Lafourche and Iberville. Officials with St. John the Baptist indicated earlier this year that they may not take part in the pilot after initially signing up, but the parish has not officially withdrawn, Penny Dastugue, the BESE president said. She anticipates the pilot program will yield useful information for school officials over the next several months.

"This is a voluntary way for districts to explore new concepts and new practices," Dastugue said. "The idea here is to empower local school leaders and to shift the decision-making over to the local schools where there is a firm understanding of student needs."

School districts that have embraced SBB throughout the country find that it translates into greater transparency, heightened flexibility and greater equity, Dastugue noted. She also said that the overall success of the charter school program suggests that SBB can be made to work in a larger scale.
"A one size fits all approach does not work," she said. "We need to be student specific and let principals address the individual needs of their schools. In a way, we already have a successful for student based budgeting with our charter schools."

Read the whole story here.

Universal Charter Schools in New Orleans

Posted on October 17, 2011, 12:46pm | Lisa Snell

My favorite report of the year is out. Instead of universal preschool, how about universal charter schools in New Orleans and many other cities with increasing market share. Charter schools can hardly be accused of creaming or discrimination when every student is enrolled in a charter school. 

A record number of school districts—six—have at least 30 percent of their public school students enrolled in public charter schools, according to an annual report released Monday by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools (NAPCS) entitled A Growing Movement: American’s Largest Charter School Communities – Sixth Annual Edition. In addition, an all-time high of 18 school districts have more than 20 percent of their public school students enrolled in charter schools.

“This report demonstrates that in areas where families have a choice, a growing number of them are choosing public charter schools over the traditional public schools available to them,” said Ursula Wright, interim president and CEO of the NAPCS. “Consequently, the public education landscape is shifting in many major cities.”

Exceptional findings from the report include:

• Six school districts now have more than 30 percent of their public school students enrolled in public charter schools: New Orleans, Washington D.C., Detroit, Kansas City (Missouri), Flint, and Gary.
• 18 school districts have more than 20 percent of their public school students enrolled in charter schools
• An astounding 70 percent of public school students in New Orleans attended public charter schools in the 2010-2011 school year. Charter schools are the highest performing sector of public schools in the city.
• Los Angeles again tops the list of districts with the highest number of public charter school students enrolled with 79,385 students. To provide a sense of scale, the number of students enrolled in public charter schools in Los Angeles, alone, would place the city’s charter schools in the top 45 of the 100 largest school districts in the United States.
• Nearly 100 school districts now have at least 10 percent of public school students in charter schools.

"We estimate that there are now more than 2 million students in public charter schools across the country," said Wright. "And with hundreds of thousands more students across the country hoping for an additional seat in a charter school, we expect our share of the public school landscape to continue to rise in the coming years."

The "Top 10" highest percentages of public charter school students are in these 12 districts: New Orleans Public School System, La. (70 percent), District of Columbia Public Schools, (39 percent), Detroit Public Schools, Mich. (37 percent), Kansas City, Mo. (35 percent), Flint City School District, Mich. (32 percent), Gary Community School Corporation, Ind. (30 percent), St. Louis Public Schools, Mo. (29 percent), Dayton Public Schools, Ohio (27 percent), Youngstown City Schools, Ohio (24 percent), Albany City School District, NY (23 percent), Cleveland Municipal School District, Ohio (23 percent) and Toledo Public Schools, Ohio (23 percent).

The "Top 10" districts serving the highest number of public charter school students are: Los Angeles Unified School District, Calif. (79,385), Detroit Public Schools, Mich. (45,073), the School District of Philadelphia, Pa. (40,322), New York City Department of Education, N.Y. (38,743), Chicago Public Schools, Ill. (37,909), Houston Independent School District, Tex. (37,499), Miami-Dade County Public Schools. Fla. (35,380), District of Columbia Public Schools (29,366), New Orleans Public School System, La. (27,728) and Broward County Public Schools, Fla. (24,150).

The "Top 10" districts that experienced the highest annual growth in the percentage of public charter school students are: Orange County Public Schools, Fla. (42 percent), Memphis City Schools, Tenn. (41 percent), New York City Department of Education, N.Y. (29 percent), Mesa Public Schools, Ariz. (27 percent), Baltimore City Public Schools, Md. (26 percent), New Orleans Public Schools, La. (23 percent), Alpine School District, Utah (22 percent), San Antonio Independent School District, Tex, (21 percent), Indianapolis Public Schools, Ind. (20 percent), Los Angeles Unified School District, Calif. (19 percent) and the School District of Philadelphia, Pa. (19 percent).

Download a copy of the report A Growing Movement: America's Largest Charter School Communities - Sixth Annual Edition athttp://www.publiccharters.org/publication/?id=613. The report uses 2010-2011 school-year enrollment figures.

Los Angeles Charters Pwned District Schools

Posted on September 2, 2011, 10:50am | Lisa Snell

In Los Angeles,  Charters pwned district schools. The LA school board voted to exclude charter schools from the public school choice competition and give first priority to in-district schools. This is especially depressing given how much better charters are doing overall and how much better the charters that won the first round of public school choice are doing compared to the in-district providers.

The California Charter Schools Assoication keeps score and charter schools in Los Angeles are winning.

Los Angeles charter schools made the largest difference for the most disadvantaged kids.

• Both LAUSD and charter schools have seen their median API scores increase in the past four years. Charters have seen bigger cumulative gains than the district over that period at the elementary and high school levels.
• Median charter school API scores are higher than the district's for several key subgroups including: African Americans (23 point difference), Latinos (30 point difference), English Language Learners (20 point difference) and Socioeconomically Disadvantaged Students (22 point difference). See more detailed charts below.
• The difference between district and charter performance is particularly notable for Socioeconomically Disadvantaged and Latino students in charter high schools. Students from those subgroups had median API scores that were over 100 points higher than their counterparts at non-charters. English Learners at charter middle schools also had median API scores over 100 points higher than their non-charter counterparts.

Most Market-Oriented Education City in America Still Rocking Kids World

Posted on August 12, 2011, 3:03pm | Lisa Snell

The good news out of New Orleans, where close to 80 percent of students are now in charter schools, just keeps coming. As the Times-Picayune reports:

New Orleans public schools are improving test scores more rapidly than the state as a whole among three critical groups: African-American students, low-income students and special education students. . . .

For the first time since Louisiana began keeping track, a higher percentage of African-American students in New Orleans schools scored at or above grade level on the state's high-stakes test than those statewide: 53 percent in New Orleans compared to 51 percent in the state as a whole. That's a milestone, especially considering that four years ago only 32 percent of African-American public school students in New Orleans could make that claim, compared to 43 percent statewide.

The Price Tag for Schools for the Deaf

Posted on August 1, 2011, 12:37pm | Lisa Snell

I weigh in at The New York Times, Room for Debate, on whether we should maintain separate schools for the deaf to the price tag of $87K per kid, and propose that special needs scholarships would be cheaper and offer parents more choice.

California has two schools for the deaf, in Fremont and Riverside, costing $35 million per school (not including capital costs). Combined, they educate close to 800 students a year. This puts the per-pupil cost at more than $87,000 a year - at the expense of other students statewide, including the more than 12,000 deaf or hard-of-hearing students who do not attend the California schools for the deaf.
Unfortunately, even with all of these concentrated resources, the academic outcomes for deaf students enrolled at these separate schools are dismal. According to the California Department of Education 2010 STAR testing results, 0 percent of third-graders were proficient in English language arts at the Riverside school, and 72 percent were far below basic proficiency. By 11th grade, 90 percent of the students at the Riverside school are far below basic proficiency in English language arts.

A much more sustainable financial model, especially given huge state budget shortfalls, would be to have the special needs funding follow the child to the instructional model of his or her parents' choice.

Bonus* Lance Izumi from the Pacific Research Institute makes the case for choice as well.

New Orleans: Most Market-Driven School District in Nation Increases Test Scores Again

Posted on May 26, 2011, 3:31pm | Lisa Snell

New Orleans kids continue to improve under the market-driven charter school system. This year 71% of all New Orleans public school students attend charter schools and 77% of students enrolled in grades K-8 attend charter schools. In addition, there is no residential assignment in New Orleans and even in traditional schools which are not charter schools there is open enrollment and the "money follows the kid."

Today NOLA.Com reports on the continuing progress in New Orleans based on the just released test scores: 

The largest gains overall came among the New Orleans schools the state took over after Katrina because of their historic poor performance. Most of those schools are now independent charters overseen by the RSD, which also runs a number of traditional schools.

RSD students, including charter and traditional campuses, posted their fourth-consecutive year of improvement, increasing the proportion of students scoring at grade level or above to 48 percent. That's a 5 percent gain compared to 2010. With that progress, the proportion of RSD students scoring at grade level or better has more than doubled since 2007, from 23 percent to 48 percent.

RSD Superintendent John White said the results show the district is a national model for broader education reform efforts."The New Orleans system of schools works. Period. End of story. And we cannot go back to a system that does not put children's needs first." he said. "These results should close the book on that question."

New Orleans' kids #winning. Let's make choice and "money following the kids" a national model.

California Provides the Case in Point Against National Curriculum

Posted on May 16, 2011, 2:17pm | Lisa Snell

Last week I signed onto a manifesto opposing ongoing federal government efforts to create a national curriculum and testing system with a broad coalition of over 100 educational leaders.

The manifesto, is entitled Closing the Door on Innovation. It argues that current U.S. Department of Education efforts to nationalize curriculum will stifle innovation and freeze into place an unacceptable status quo; end local and state control of schooling; lack a legitimate legal basis; and impose a one-size-fits-all model on America's students.

Congress is now preparing to debate renewal of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the main law authorizing federal aid to K-12 education. Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Education has been quietly funding efforts by two assessment groups to develop a national K-12 curriculum, along with a national testing system that tests every public-school student multiple times each year. This federal initiative will create a national system of academic-content standards, tests, and curriculum.

While I oppose National standards for a variety of reasons, I offer up a personal example from my children's experience in California public schools as to why I am certain that setting a nationwide ceiling for academic standards is a bad idea and will pointlessly limit academic potential and achievement.

While California has many shortcomings in how we educate children, the one bright spot has been the state's high academic standards. On the one hand, California provides a case in point on the folly of equating strong standards and a solid curriculum as the primary path to higher- quality education. It is simply not enough. California has some of the strongest standards, curriculum, and tests in the nation and yet the state is still plagued by poor student performance.  

On the other hand, California's strong standards have provided many children with opportunities that they would not have under the consensus -based common-core standards being proposed for the nation. More specifically, the common core standards do not have the strong preparation for Algebra that is currently the norm in California.

Algebra is where the debate over a national standards, curriculum, and tests gets personal for my family. Both of my children have been fortunate to have completed Algebra during middle school. During my children's elementary school years Algebraic concepts were an important element of the school curriculum. In other words, because of California's strong emphasis on Algebra in middle school, they introduced Algebraic functions at a much earlier age as part of a normal elementary school math curriculum. Every state test, even in third grade, had test questions based on Algebraic functions.  By the time California kids reach middle school Algebra is expected and familiar.

This year my daughter is doing very well in a 7^th grade honors Algebra class.  By the time she reaches high school she will start with Algebra 2. If a national math curriculum based on common core were currently the new norm, it is doubtful that California middle schools would regularly offer 7^th grade honors Algebra classes. My children have not been the only beneficiaries of California's strong math standards.

In a San Francisco Chronicle opinion piece "National standards would harm math curriculum," Ze'ev Wurman and Bill Evers explain the real gains California students have made because of the states tougher math standards:

Over the past decade and a half, California's Latino student population has almost doubled from 30 percent to over 50 percent, many of them facing special learning challenges. Yet the number of students taking algebra by eighth grade has jumped from 16 percent to 60 percent, while the success rate has jumped from 39 percent to 48 percent since 2002. In 2002, only a third of high school students took Algebra 2 by grade 11; now more than half take it, and with increasing success rates.

More importantly, between 2003 and 2009 the number of African American students successfully taking Algebra 1 by grade 8 more than tripled from 1,700 to 5,400; the jump among Hispanic students was from 10,000 to 45,000; and for students from low-income households, from 12,000 to 49,000. Algebra 2 in high school shows similar results. Finally, since 1997, California State University freshman enrollment has doubled from 25,000 to 50,000, while remediation rates in mathematics have dropped from 54 percent to 37 percent.

While there are many reasons to be skeptical of the claims made for the advantages of a national curriculum, California students have made real progress in math because of California's tougher standards. It seems unconscionable to subvert this progress because of a lower federal standard.  

State of the State: New Jersey in 2011

Posted on April 1, 2011, 4:16pm | Harris Kenny

This is the eighth of a ten-part series on the 2011 State of the State (SOTS) speeches in states with the ten worst projected relative budget deficits for FY 2012. Budget data is from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities’ (CBPP) recent budget report, and SOTS speech text is from Stateline. CBPP’s data on states’ FY 2012 budget deficits as a percentage of their FY 2011 budget is the benchmark for relative budget deficits.

According to CBPP, New Jersey faces the third worst relative budget deficit in the nation in FY 2012, equaling roughly 37.4 percent of the state’s FY 2011 budget; and the fourth highest absolute budget deficit, totaling over $10.5 billion.

On January 11, 2011 New Jersey Governor Chris Christie delivered his SOTS address (full text available here). Governor Christie deliberately highlights successful state spending cuts, property tax caps, interest arbitration award caps, and closing consecutive budget deficits of $2 billion in FY 2010 and $11 billion in FY 2011. He then prefaces the remainder of his SOTS saying:

Instead of (providing a) long list of initiatives for the year head... (He wants) to highlight not the small things, but the major challenges that (New Jersey) has ignored for too long and that (it) must confront now. For New Jersey; it’s time to do the big things.

Below are the policy highlights from Gov. Christie’s address:

• Spending Cuts: Gov. Christie notably says that he wants to pursue spending cuts by having every department re-write their budgets from the “bottom up,” rather than using their FY 2011 budgets as a starting point and trimming down.
• Tax Increases: He pledges to not include any tax increases in his FY 2012 budget proposal, specifically saying that after 115 tax increases in the last 10 years it is time for comprehensive tax reform. He also says that in order to prevent tax increases, Medicaid and healthcare costs must be reformed (for more, see Government Reform below).
• Economic Development: Christie suggests pursuing tax cuts and economic development incentives, however only within the context of a balanced budget.

• Government Reform: He identifies the state’s “antiquated and unsustainable pension and benefit system” as a cloud hanging over the state. Christie notes that without reform, the unfunded liability of New Jersey’s pension system will grow from $54 billion to $183 billion within 30 years. In order to address this problem he proposes raising the retirement age, curbing the effect of cost of living adjustments based on actual inflation, collecting modest contributions by employees toward their retirement and contributions by the State to the pension fund. Regarding the pension system, he starkly says, “Benefits are too rich, and contributions are too small, and the system is on a path to bankruptcy.”

  Gov. Christie concludes his SOTS by discussing education reform. Christie has a broad vision for education reform, and emphasizes the following policy goals: promoting school choice through vouchers, increasing the number of charter schools, empowering principals, reforming poor-performing public schools, cutting out-of-classroom costs, focusing efforts on teachers and children rewarding merit rather than seniority, improving the measurement and evaluation of teachers and eliminating teacher tenure.

Policymakers in the Garden State have been engaged in high-profile budget wrangling over the past few years, and it appears that will continue as the State grapples with persistent budget deficits. For additional policy tools they should refer to the American Legislative Exchange Council’s (ALEC) State Budget Reform Toolkit and Reason Foundation’s Annual Privatization Report 2010: State Government Privatization section. For the previous articles in this SOTS series, see: Louisiana, North Carolina, Wisconsin, California, Illinois, Nevada, Connecticut, Minnesota and Oregon.

State of the State: Nevada in 2011

Posted on March 17, 2011, 4:41pm | Harris Kenny

This is the sixth of a ten-part series on the 2011 State of the State (SOTS) speeches in states with the ten worst projected relative budget deficits for FY 2012. Budget data is from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities' (CBPP) recent budget report, and SOTS speech text is from Stateline. CBPP's data on states' FY 2012 budget deficits as a percentage of their FY 2011 budget is the benchmark for relative budget deficits.

According to CBPP, Nevada is projected to have the worst relative budget deficit of any state in FY 2012, totaling over 45% of its FY 2011 budget. Nevada has an absolute projected budget deficit of $1.5 billion, placing it in the middle of the pack using the latter measure.

On January 24, 2011 Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval delivered his 2011 SOTS speech (full text available here). He notably says, “[For Nevada,] true success lies in making a fundamental course correction.” Gov. Sandoval includes more substantive discussion of policy in his SOTS than any other governor evaluated in this ten-part series so far. Below are the policy proposals included in his address:

• Spending Cuts: Gov. Sandoval is critical of the previously proposed budget, which allotted $8.3 billion in spending over the next two years ($2.1 billion higher than the state’s current spending level.) He notes that this 34% increase in spending comes at a time when the state’s population is declining. Instead, he wants to decrease spending to 2007 levels and proposes a two-year $5.8 billion budget. He proposes several measures that would affect public employees in an effort to reduce layoffs, these include: maintaining current freezes on merit and longevity pay, reducing salaries by 5% and eliminating the furlough program. K-12 per pupil spending would be reduced, in part due to expiring stimulus dollars, but his budget contains several education reforms (discussed below) meant to offset spending cuts. He discusses transferring a number of responsibilities from state agencies to local governments. He goes on to emphasize that his proposal would redirect and fine-tune funding to mitigate cuts to services and programs.
• Tax Increases: He does not discuss any tax increases in the SOTS, however proposes “raising $190 million by monetizing the state insurance premium tax proceeds.” This essentially calls for an advanced payment of future revenue.

• Government Reform: Gov. Sandoval’s SOTS includes many detailed government reform proposals.

  He recommends the “consolidation, elimination or centralization of twenty departments and agencies.” He discusses the creation of an “Office of the Inspector General within the executive branch… [Responsible for] reviewing, auditing and evaluating expenditure of state funds.” Gov. Sandoval mentions his plans to introduce a bill that would place a sunset clause on every licensing and advisory board by June 2013. He goes on to discuss his Priorities and Performance Budget, which articulates the level of priority of each public program/service and provides corresponding performance measures.

  He announces plans to address operation and oversight of a Nevada Health Insurance Exchange in order to comply with new federal laws and maintain state control. He clearly states his belief that “many aspects of [the National Health Care Reform passed in 2010] are unconstitutional, and (he) will continue to fight to have them overturned.” Gov. Sandoval also recognizes the projected costs of Medicaid expansion, which could cost the state $574 million between 2014-2019.

  His budget includes a number of education reform proposals. First, he proposes the creation of a Block Grant Program that would adjust distribution of education funds to local districts and allow them more flexibility and autonomy. $20 million would be provided as performance pay incentives for the most effective teachers. He makes clear his desire to eliminate teacher tenure, longevity pay increases and advanced degree benefits. He wants to pursue open enrollment, expand charter school options and increase vouchers for private schools. In higher education, he proposes increasing scholarship funds and granting autonomy over tuition to the Regents that administer universities and community colleges, with the request that 15% of any increased tuition revenue be reserved for financial aid.

  Gov. Sandoval shares candid words on collective bargaining saying, “collective bargaining must be reformed if (Nevada is) to change the course on which (they) find (themselves).” He then addresses public employee benefits saying, “Nevada’s Public Employee Retirement System (PERS) cannot sustain its current level of liability. Future employees must join PERS under some form of a defined contribution plan. And the Public Employee Benefit Plan can no longer afford full health care coverage for all retirees. New employees entering that system must do so under a new set of rules as well.”

• Economic Development: He proposes revamping the state’s Commission on Economic Development by restructuring and renaming it completely. The new entity—Nevada Jobs Unlimited—would be “a public-private partnership existing largely outside state government.” The public-private economic development entity would be a cabinet-level agency and would focus on growing jobs and recruiting companies from out-of-state. He proposes a $10 million Catalyst Fund to provide resources to Nevada Jobs Unlimited. He states his desire to expand public investment in broadband by including $3 million in his budget towards that end. He agrees with the Nevada Vision Stakeholders Group, which wants increased access to federally owned land within Nevada for alternative energy production. He endorses investment in access to Las Vegas from Phoenix via Interstate 11 and from Southern California via rail lines. Gov. Sandoval emphasizes his recently signed Executive Order that freezes most state regulations and requires a complete regulatory review. Gov. Sandoval also identifies the “Silver State Works” program, which will spend $10 million over the next two years providing resources to unemployed workers. Lastly, he calls for the creation of a state Grants Office, responsible for identifying “federal and philanthropic opportunities that have for to long been overlooked.”

Policymakers in the Silver State are grappling with the worst projected relative budget deficit in the country. While there are no quick fixes, Gov. Sandoval does include an impressive number of policy proposals to assist in balancing the budget. For more ideas, see the American Legislative Exchange Council’s (ALEC) recently published State Budget Reform Toolkit and Reason Foundation’s Annual Privatization Report 2010: State Government Privatization section.

For the previous articles in this SOTS series, see: Wisconsin, California, Illinois, Connecticut, Minnesota and Oregon.

Michelle Rhee's Legacy: Changing the Court of Public Opinion

Posted on October 13, 2010, 11:25am | Lisa Snell

As the media frenzy heats up around Michelle Rhee's resignation from the D.C. public schools and speculation begins about where she will land, we should all take a moment and thank her for making it safe for the rest of us to engage in a more robust discussion about public education in America.

While Michelle Rhee was certainly overhyped, it is because of the media fascination with her personal story that the general public now has a much better idea of what is at stake and what is wrong with the way schools run in America.

Michelle Rhee’s number one accomplishment is making the sacred issues surrounding teachers--from firing teachers to tenure to teacher performance matter in the court of public opinion. Examining teacher performance is no longer a third rail for American politics. Her biggest legacy will be making it safe for other education leaders and superintendents to start questioning the status quo about how we hire, fire, and retain teachers in the United States. This genie is not going back in the bottle and although we have a long way to go, the teaching profession is changing and the teachers unions are no longer free from public scrutiny.

The bottom line is that almost every school district in America could benefit from imitating Rhee's actions in terms of firing the lowest-performing teachers, closing failing schools, and changing teacher contracts.

This is a good time to go read Reason's Katherine Mangu-Ward's excellent feature on Chancellor Rhee and her contributions to education reform: Last Chance for School Reform.

Three Reasons Obama's Education Vision Fails

Posted on October 7, 2010, 1:35pm | Lisa Snell

Check out Reason.tv's new video on why Obama's education vision fails.

As Reason's Nick Gillespie explains:

President Barack Obama is making his bid to be "the education president." At the start of NBC's recent Education Nation summit in New York, Obama appeared on the Today Show and touted what he claimed were a wide-ranging set of reforms to improve America's K-12 schools.

Yet Obama's education vision deserves an F for at least three reasons:

1. Money Talks. Obama says that the educational system needs new ideas and more money. Despite a doubling in inflation-adjusted per-pupil spending since the early 1970s, student achievement is flat at best. But Obama is placing most of his bets on the money part. While he brags constantly about his Race to the Top initiative, in which states competed for $4 billion to fund innovative programs, he's spent more than $80 billion in no-strings-attached stimulus funds to maintain the educational status quo.

2. Choice Cuts. Candidate Obama said that he'd try any reform idea regardless of ideology. Yet one of his first education-related moves after taking office was to aid his Senate mentor, Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), in killing a successful and popular D.C. voucher program that let low-income residents exercise the same choice Obama did in sending his daughters to private school.

3. The Unions Forever. The two largest teachers unions, The American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association, overwhelmingly supported Obama with their votes and their contributions. Some 95 percent of the groups' campaign contributions go to Democratic candidates and the NEA, spends more money on elections that Microsoft, ExxonMobil, Walmart, and the AFL-CIO combined. No wonder Obama's big talking point is that he wants to add 10,000 more teachers to public payrolls despite the fact that there are already more teachers per student than ever.

Reforming education may not be politically easy, but the solution is pretty simple: Give parents and students more ability to choose - and exit - schools. This works for every other sort of business and it works for higher education, too. There's no reason to think it wouldn't work for K-12 education.

And sadly, there's absolutely no reason to think that Obama will embrace that sort of change.

Charter schools versus Los Angeles Unified: School Building Costs Edition

Posted on August 24, 2010, 12:18pm | Lisa Snell

If you thought the $578 million for one high school in Los Angeles was obscene, wait until you here how much it cost to build several charter schools in the same geographic region with the same real estate and material costs and restraints. As the California Charter School Association President Jed Wallace writes in today's Los Angeles Times:

The Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools cluster, scheduled to open this fall on the site of the former Ambassador Hotel, was built at a cost of $578 million, or nearly $140,000 per student seat. It is without question the most expensive public school ever built in the Los Angeles Unified School District, and quite possibly the most expensive public school in the country.

The project's astronomical cost raises a question about whether the school district is using resources efficiently. . . .

When charter schools manage to get funding to build their own schools independent of the district, they do so for far less money than the LAUSD does. Recently, the Alliance for College Ready-Public Schools broke ground on a facility within sight of the Watts Towers that will serve 550 students and will cost $8.8 million. That is $16,000 per student seat, or one-ninth the cost of the Ambassador site project.

And the Alliance site is no exception. Over the past several years, Green Dot built seven charter schools in the vicinity of the RFK Community School, and it spent less than $85 million for all of them. Those schools currently serve about 4,300 students, which means they were built for under $20,000 per student seat.

If the district had given the $578 million it spent on one school to charter schools, we would have created many more seats for students, and the seats would have been in schools that are providing great results for kids and their families.

To summarize we are talking $140,000 a student versus less than $20,000 per student to build school buildings in Los Angeles. Charter schools in Los Angeles prove the district has wasted millions on school buildings rather than focusing on student achievement. If the district had given some of this money to charters they would have cheaper buildings and higher-performing students.