From TEA: Charter Schools bill up in Senate, Tennessee public schools at risk

[Jamey Dobbs]

Does anyone have any information on this? Copied from TEA website http://www.teateachers.org/News.asp?s=1&nid=149

Tennessee public schools at risk

Three extremely costly and dangerous charter school bills go before the Senate Education Committee on Tuesday. If passed the bills would send public tax dollars to for-profit companies and private organizations to operate and manage, what would no longer be, public charter schools. At a time when Tennessee is strapped to pay for public schools, these bills would skim off millions of dollars to pay for the unproven experiment that is charter schools. The cost to Memphis public school children alone is over $23 million this year according to figures from Memphis City Schools.

As currently structured, Tennessee school systems must pay public charter schools the full per pupil expenditure for each child who transfers to a charter school. This money comes from the school systems' operating budget each year.

If one child from every classroom in every school in a school system transferred, the regular school costs to that community would not change. Why? Because the remaining children would still need their classroom, their teacher, their lights/heat/air, transportation, etc.

For an estimate of what the loss of just one child per school would cost Tennessee public school systems, click here. http://www.teateachers.org/Images/Users/Research/CostOfCharters.pdf [note: for Knox County, the estimate is $716,967]

[Debi]

One other thought. In one of the links it said disabilities groups could be pitted against each other if autism schools are created. Did this happen when the TN School for Deaf and for Blind was created? I don't see any difference. I don't know what the statistics of various disabilities groups are but I know autism is now less than 1 in 100 and that is higher than several other disabilities and venture to guess higher than deaf or blind students.

[Debi]

I saw the link from Ginevra. Thanks, BTW. I am personally torn on the issue of special autism schools. On the one hand I think it's great, on the other research shows inclusive settings offer better outcomes. But one thing not being addressed, largely because most people with autism are under age 28 or so, is the issue of autism community. Many groups have their own "community" -- gays, little people, deaf, ethnic groups, etc. As my child with autism ages I see her finding comfort with other children with disabilities, oftentimes more than NT peers. Probably because they are more accepting of each other, which again is normal human response.

Another issue is the expectations. I wonder if special schools have little expectation, which may be why studies don't find as high outcomes. If these special schools could still have an emphasis on college-bound education, I'd be all for it.

[Vic Spencer]

Based on what I hear a number of changes are in the works nationally, because public schools performed poorly yet our country is among the top 4 spenders for education in the world. This trend simply cannot continue. It is finished. This is one of many possibilities to quickly graduate more kids with higher grades. The biggest challenge with the under performing public schools is their antiquated management style with emphasis on expenses and not on what kind of results we get for it. So there is no incentive to date to really do a lot better. I will be able to show you all some ten-year trends soon that shows that clearly enough. Certainly the quickest way, some argue, to better performance is to reallocate the funds from public school budgets and combined with extra federal dollars create a new competing system that does not have the old management warts. We WILL see changes under OBAMA for the better.The bottom line is that over several decades the existing system has been rising in cost but sliding in delivering education. No one had the backbone to stand up and raise hell about this poor trend, and the public who paid enormous dollars for it went uninformed. So a legitimate question is should you have to grind through a change of bad management habits above school level that are not effective (which is a costly and risky undertaking) or should you start phasing over to a competitive system that doesn't have all that baggage. The latter is the obvious choice for those with enough management experience. The bottom line that drives this is the absolute necessity to raise academic output as measured by the ACT faster than public school systems can with their sluggish management system and high overhead above the schools. You can see this in the articles I am writing in knoxfocus.com, including the next two, but try to see what I am saying and what I am not saying. We need and we will get big changes for the better under Obama. You are getting this from someone who did not vote for him, but I found around the election time that in education he is considering the right things in my opinion.

[Vic Spencer]

Yes he changed quite a few things during his run for president, I realize that. I did not talk to him but to some people who are close to him directly even now. I am certain that there will be changes in the direction I indicated, but to what extent is a question in my mind. Why? Because things cannot continue the way education has been, and a majority of the people will find out what happened with education within two years maximum in my opinion. The cat is coming out of the bag in a lot of places nationwide. The Diploma project is not just a Tennessee project.

[Sheri Thomas]

Dear Yours Truly;
You can be sure that Obama is working hard to make charter schools happen and that is my dilemma. I have watched these schools grow out of business venture capitalists who are out to make the dollars and leave, both democrat and republican. The actions began when a spark was sent to legislators to create competition since vouchers did not pass, then they began to make the public schools fail. The creation of the No Child left behind was born on the philosophy that a test can be given to show progress or not. Have you ever seen the tests? They in no way reflect progress but are tools to set the schools up for failure. The only reason the charters are showing improvement is that the test scores of public schools are so low due to ethnic groups that have low english skills, special needs populations and low socioeconomic groups in which many could not get preschool. Charters do not accompany these populations in many of their schools. They also have a smaller ratio of teachers to students and can limit the class sizes. These factors alone should in no way be shown as evidence that the Charter schools are performing better over-all. Shame on the greedy people again.

[Debi]

"Charters do not accompany these populations in many of their schools."

I'm not sure what you mean by this statement. The study I cited somewhere back in this thread listed a large percentage of charter schools that were started because of specific demographics, and the schools serve those demographics. According to the study, they have been successful in educating those students.

[Vic Spencer]

Sheri, do Charter Schools produce better academic results? As in getting better ACT results? Do you have any stats pro or con about academic results?

How much do they cost per student in our tax dollars per student? Any stats published on that?

[granma2]

Vic, the National Center for Educational Statistics compared the NAEP scores of charter schools and found no measurable differences. You can read the executive summary here: http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/studies/charter/2005456.asp

[Sheri Thomas]

To all;
In our state the PAC group and lobbyists associated with The Charters are showing better ISAT, ACT and math and reading scores for their charter schools. Upon review we see that there are limited or no facilities to accomodate IEP children like my son and less than 2% of children of limited English and limited or no children on economic lunch programs. In a nutshell these are the reasons for the higher scores not to mention the low student to teacher ratio.
My biggest beef is the financials which in our state have shown an increase per student expense than our public school system by anywhere from $700.00 per student to $1,700.00 more spent per student. This is unconstitutional and robbery as far as I am concerned. How can we honestly look at charters with a limited enrolment and compare it to a public school that must take in all students.
I do agree that our system is flawed and we need to overhaul, however the thought that charter schools will be a quick fix is taking the ideal that business and competition can cure it. Have you been watching our economic status due to this capitalistic attitude? Yikes! To think that we can run education in a manner similar to business is a travesty and needs to be stopped. The reviews by parents that I have seen mention time and again how the teachers care more because they are getting paid more. I think that is sad but a reality and as I have tried to support any measure to get teachers raises in our schools the State Board has voted them down and often decreased their pay. I for one left the school system and now own and run my own business which has absolutely nothing to do with my educational degree but the pay is in line with the economy. If everyone on this blog believes that education in itself is important then answer the question why can't teacher salaries not even keep up with inflation? Why do people frown on educators yet turn around and feel a bail-out of companies who pay CEO's millions is just fine. The very sad realization comes when you research the financial corporations supporting the lobbyists for charter schools:(
I only want to end by stating that when charters first started in 1991 they likened them to public schools that imitate private education. Have you seen the amount of those tuitions? Here we go.

[Vic Spencer]

Sheri, I for one could use some backup for all this like authoritative articles in Web sites on the subject or what the TN or other education department Web sites publish, or surveys. I have two major interests:Consolidated ACT score comparisons of Charter vs other high schools, andAverage cost of running them per student in TN.Can you help with that?

[Sheri Thomas]

Vic;
I am at my office and have the websites for our state(Idaho) in a file at home. I can get too sidetracked at work and since my husband has no job right now I am trying to do enough work for two incomes. As granma showed the 2003 study by the National Center for Educational Studies I would hope that states have their own statistics. It is how the states show the statistics that differ. I do like the study in 2003 and wish they would do another similar but I know the economics have turned to using money to start schools and not to study them.

[Vic Spencer]

Sheri, if you have something later about the two points I was asking, I would appreciate it.