Federal Education Policies that Undermine Democracy and Local Control

New Report Cautions Against Federal Education Policies that Undermine Democracy and Local Control

William J. Mathis, (802) 383-0058, wmathis@sover.net
Kenneth Howe, (303) 492-7229, Ken.Howe@Colorado.edu

URL for this press release:  http://tinyurl.com/9x2ufq3

BOULDER, CO  October 16, 2012 – “Local control” has been a bedrock principle of public schooling in America since its earliest days, but a new report concludes the concept “has all but disappeared” in discussions of education policy.

The report, Democracy Left Behind: How Recent Education Reforms Undermine Local School Governance and Democratic Education, by Kenneth Howe and David Meens of the University of Colorado Boulder, examines the impact on democratic ideals of vanishing local control over education. The report examines the making of education policy as well as the decisions about what schools teach and how they teach it.

The report is published today by the National Education Policy Center (NEPC) at the University of Colorado Boulder.

In a healthy democracy, schools play a key role in preparing citizens.  A healthy democracy also depends on citizens engaged in democratic governance. And since schools sit at the center of most communities, local democratic control over schooling has long been highly valued in the United States.

Howe and Meens describe local control as “the power of communities, made up of individuals bound together by common geography, resources, problems and interests, to collectively determine the policies that govern their lives.” As regards schooling, this typically refers to control by elected school boards and their constituents.

Yet the No Child Left Behind Act and subsequent federal policy has forced a surrender of local control. The local role under these systems is largely to be held accountable by state and federal officials. While local discretion is allowed for how to comply with state and federal mandates, the constraints imposed by those mandates have been enormous. Consequently, Howe and Meens contend, NCLB and its progeny have been fundamentally anti-democratic.

The same is true of the reform policies that have been advanced by President Obama and Education Secretary Duncan. “Despite Obama and Duncan’s rhetorical support for greater local control of schools, the reform instruments that their policies are based on are clearly antithetical to it,” the authors write.  They point in particular to Race to the Top, which puts states in competition with one another for federal funds to induce them to expand testing, including using student test scores as a substantial portion of teacher evaluation, and to expand the number of charter schools.

Howe and Meens explain the importance of a balance between local control and federal and state regulation. In a democracy, there is a presumption of local control, which may be overridden when it has undemocratic consequences, as in de jure segregation. But such a justification does not exist for the recent federal education policy take-over.

The authors also warn that current reform approaches are marginalizing community involvement. “Democratic reform should involve local stakeholders, especially marginalized members of society, because inclusion is a democratic value that increases not only the likelihood that policies will be just, but also the likelihood that reform will succeed,” Howe and Meens write. “Such inclusion also helps create the conditions in which all students can attain the democratic threshold.”

They conclude with a series of recommendations, urging schools and education policymakers to take three key steps.

• First, move away from a punitive model based on threats to withhold funding. This should be replaced by a participatory model – such as support and incentives for school employees, parents and community members to collaborate together on resolving educational problems.
• Second, encourage states and local communities to adopt curriculum standards “that include a conscious and substantive focus on developing the deliberative skill and dispositions required of democratic citizenship.”
• Third, curtail the privatization of public education resources. Instead, build up democratic values by holding schools receiving public funds accountable to the public through democratically elected school boards and other democratic institutions.

Find Democracy Left Behind: How Recent Education Reforms Undermine Local School Governance and Democratic Education, by Kenneth Howe and David Meens, on the web at

http://nepc.colorado.edu/publication/democracy-left-behind.

The mission of the National Education Policy Center is to produce and disseminate high-quality, peer-reviewed research to inform education policy discussions. We are guided by the belief that the democratic governance of public education is strengthened when policies are based on sound evidence.  For more information on NEPC, please visit http://nepc.colorado.edu/.

This policy brief was made possible in part by the support of the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice (greatlakescenter.org).

Is Separation of Church and State Outdated?

From the October issue of the School Administrator

BY BENNY L. GOODEN

When the framers of our Constitution addressed government involvement in religion in the First Amendment, it is unlikely they anticipated the controversy those statements would spur in the centuries to follow. While constitutional scholars and historians engage in a lively debate with those who assert that Madison, Jefferson and others never intended for government to erect a “wall of separation” between church and state, the practical interaction between religious practice and public schools has presented continuing challenges to school leaders.

The communities in which many of us reached adulthood likely had a very different religious tone from that found in cities and towns across America today. The number of religious affiliations was limited to a handful of Protestant churches, a Catholic parish and possibly a Jewish synagogue. Each sustained its own traditions and practices in relative harmony. School activities and celebrations associated with religious beliefs were common and generally accommodated with dignity and respect by all.

It was only when a predominant or majority religion chose to impose mandatory sectarian practices upon everyone that the real controversy arose. Much of the litigation in this field can trace its roots to attempts by those with local or state governing authority to impose particular religious practices upon everyone using the power of government — whether school board, city or state — as the pretext.

Today’s vast national fabric of religious organizations presents a significantly different environment for public schools. Even small communities have an abundance of different faiths that extend far beyond the traditional. Eastern religions, evangelicals of all types and a range of religious dogma all influence our students and the school staff who serve them. Any religious activity provided under the auspices of a publicly funded school district certainly will incur the disapproval of someone.

A wise school board member once opined to me that he wanted prayer to be sponsored in all our classrooms, just so long as it was a prayer consistent with his particular religious denomination’s beliefs. By his tongue-in-cheek statement, he spoke volumes on a popular topic. This discussion is often elevated to high levels as debate and demagogy by those seeking to curry favor with various religious groups continue.

Regardless of the debate about separation of church and state, students and school employees do not leave their religious beliefs at the door to the school. Many of the teachings in today’s schools include the basic tenets of religion, including honesty, social justice, concern for others and any number of principles that hold their basis in religious beliefs and practices.

It is to the benefit of all society that our children learn these values in the home or in a religious setting and that they bring them to the public school. Will all these values be congruent? No. However, they will provide a foundation for discussion and for teaching respect for the beliefs of others, a concept lacking in much of our society today.

Horace Mann designed his common school to be the great equalizer, to include students from every religion, social class, race and background. We must promote Mann’s values in the 21st century. We need the freedom to practice religion without government mandates or prohibitions. No, God has not been expelled from school. But neither has the school defined and regulated the presence of a supreme being.

Make no mistake: The First Amendment is alive and well in our public schools. It is the responsibility of school leaders to articulate and practice the neutrality this principle holds toward all religions — and toward those who choose not to engage in religious practice.

Benny Gooden is AASA president for 2012-13. E-mail:bgooden@fortsmithschools.org 

Left Out of No Child Left Behind

Read This to Understand TFA’s Outsize Influence in DC From the Diane Ravitch Blog Left Out of No Child Left Behind by A;examder Russo Alexander Russo has written an interesting paper on how TFA has managed to have unusual influence inside the Beltway. If you wonder why members of Congress seem determined to support unpopular and ineffective programs like No Child Left Behind and Race to the  Top, read this. Interesting that the two TFA state commissioners (John White in Louisiana and Kevin Huffman of Tennessee) work for two of the nation's most reactionary governors. Click here to view the report.

Faith Meets Football and a Dispute Ensues

Enlargephoto by: Eric Kayne

As two Kountze football players prepare to play a game on Oct. 5, 2012, one holds a banner with a Bible verse. A Hardin County judge recently ruled that the high school's cheerleaders can continue to display signs with religious messages at football games.

KOUNTZE, Texas — There is a new angle to the usual hometown high school football pride on display in the store windows and marquees of this East Texas town.

Supporters still urge their Lions on to victory. But there are also messages of support for the cheerleaders in particular and the Christian faith in general — and occasionally, of scorn for the Kountze school district, which ordered the girls to stop holding banners bearing Bible verses during athletic events last month.

For the moment, the rule is on hold. At the start of a recent home football game, the team charged onto the field through a banner painted with the words of Hebrews 12:1. A day earlier, a state judge extended a temporary restraining order stopping the district from enforcing the ban.

Within the 36 hours before they showed up for the Friday night game, the cheerleaders had appeared on Good Morning America, Skyped with Gov. Rick Perry and taken the stand in the courtroom to plead their national headline-grabbing case. 

Meanwhile the town has become the latest setting in a string of lawsuits over where students' rights to religious expression end and the constraints on Texas public schools as governmental entities begin. The situation in Kountze — which has the district caught between the advice of its own lawyers and Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott — shows the fine line administrators must walk as they try to follow the law amid fiercely held beliefs on both sides. 

"No matter what, somebody is going to sue you," said Tom Brandt, a Dallas lawyer who has represented schools, now including Kountze, in First Amendment cases for two decades.

Soon after the banners first appeared on the football field, the district received a letter from the national Freedom From Religion Foundation saying it was violating constitutional doctrine. School officials ended the practice after consulting with two different attorneys and receiving the same advice, said Brandt.

The cheerleaders got their own lawyers through the Liberty Institute, a Plano-based conservative legal foundation. They also got Abbott's attention, who wrote a public letter saying that the district had received an “erroneous” legal recommendation and that his office stood ready to support the cheerleaders’ religious liberties.

The dispute in Kountze comes down to a single question: whether the cheerleaders were representing the school when they held the banners. Their lawyers, along with the attorney general, say it is clear they were acting as individuals. The squad came up with the idea, they say, bought the supplies for the banners with their own money and made them off campus.

For others, the matter is not so easily settled. They point to a 2000 U.S. Supreme Court decision, a case that originated in an East Texas town two hours south of Kountze. Santa Fe ISD v. Doe defined the boundary between student and school-sponsored speech when it outlawed student-led prayer over the loudspeakers at football games. It said the district’s policy amounted to government endorsement of religion, a violation of the First Amendment’s establishment clause.

The same would be true if the Kountze cheerleaders were allowed to proceed, said Charles Haynes, the director at the Newseum’s Religious Freedom Education Project.

 "If the cheerleaders aren't representing the school, then who are they?” said Haynes, who also advises school districts across the country on their religious expression policies. “It would be like saying that the football team doesn’t represent the school, they are just individual students just coming on the field and are free to do what they want to do.”

In an interview, Abbott said there was no ambiguity in the law on the issue of religious expression in schools. He attributed any confusion about its application among school districts to the manipulation of politically motivated organizations like the Freedom From Religion Foundation.

"The backdrop is that the Kountze battle is part of a larger war that we are defending against outside atheist groups trying to bully and steamroll school districts," said Abbott, a Republican widely expected to run for governor who successfully argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in 2005 to allow a monument displaying the Ten Commandments to stand at the Texas Capitol.

At the recent Kountze High game, people in the stands seemed to share that opinion. They said the uproar was the result of outsiders meddling in the town’s affairs — like the handful of protesters who traveled from nearby towns to hold signs in favor of keeping religion out of schools.

“All our kids go to church, they support it,” said Tiffany Clemons, as she stood with two other mothers of high school students near the sidelines during halftime. “And it’s encouraging kids who don’t go to church, to go to church.”

Sixteen-year-old Cody Merchant, a sophomore at Kountze High, said students just wanted to do something “inspiring for our boys.”

“It wasn't supposed to blow up like this,” he said. “This is a Christian town, mostly. We didn't think it would hurt anybody.”

Partly in an attempt to prevent situations like the one in Kountze, the Texas Legislature passed the Religious Views Anti-Discrimination Act in 2007. It included a requirement that districts adopt disclaimers that separated the views of student speakers at school-sponsored events from those of the school as a way of clarifying the law after the Santa Fe decision.

Since then, two major cases have tested the application of the state law, one of only a few similar statutes in the nation, In February, a San Antonio-area district reached an agreement with the family of an agnostic student who accused Medina Valley High School of frequently mixing prayer with school events. When a federal district court judge initially banned student-led prayer at the school’s graduation ceremony, an appeals court overturned the ban pending the outcome of the lawsuit.

Before the case was decided in court, the parties made a deal where the district agreed that its employees would not pray with students, proselytize or display religious artifacts.

In 2007, parents and students who objected to prayer at graduation sued over the Round Rock district’s policy requiring student elections to determine whether to include prayer as a part of the ceremonies. Federal district court judge Sam Sparks said that the state statute did not protect the district’s policy, but he declined to weigh in further on the new law’s constitutionality.

He did offer this footnote: “The Court doubts whether the new statute will do much to resolve the issue of prayers at graduations, but expects the new legislation will be quite effective at keeping attorneys in fees for the foreseeable future.”

Anxiety High Over Charters,

Anxiety High Over Charters, K-12 Aid in Wash. State

Washington state Attorney General and GOP gubernatorial candidate Rob McKenna visits with students at the Muckleshoot Tribal School in Auburn.

—Mike Kane for Education Week

By Andrew Ujifusa

Seattle

A tight race for governor, the heavy burden of rebuilding a school funding system recently declared unconstitutional, and a fourth ballot measure in two decades on charter schools has placed Washington state on an intense—and unpredictable—road for education this year.

Washington is one of nine states that don't allow charter schools, and the largest among them in population. Charter advocates nationally, who are keeping a close eye on the referendum, stress that Washington is the only noncharter state with a large metropolitan area such as Seattle-Tacoma, home to many underprivileged students they argue would benefit most from charters.

The Republican candidate for governor, state Attorney General Rob McKenna, supports charters along with some Evergreen State political progressives, but he also wants to partner with the state teachers' union to expand the share of the state budget dedicated to K-12 public schools.

Democratic challenger, Jay Inslee.

—Ken Lambert/Seattle Times

His Democratic opponent, Jay Inslee, a former congressman, says charters would dilute resources needed by a school system already facing plenty of demands. Many of his supporters, especially those in the 82,000-member Washington Education Association, see Mr. McKenna as carved from the mold of Wisconsin GOP Gov. Scott Walker, a union antagonist, and see vouchers and similar policies on the horizon if he wins.

And both candidates are grappling with a landmark state Supreme Court ruling in January requiring Washington to revamp its funding system, with mixed reviews and vague plans on the best ways forward.

"This election is the lead-up to arguably the most important legislative session that we're going to have on education," said Chris Korsmo, the president of the Seattle-based League of Education Voters, which has not endorsed either gubernatorial candidate but has supported both the charter initiative and the lawsuit over inadequate funding.

Back on Ballot

This is the fourth time Washington voters have gotten a chance to allow charter schools—the idea was voted down in 1992, 1996, and 2004. If approved, the initiative on next month's ballot would permit up to 40 charters to begin operating statewide (there are about 2,280 public schools in the state and roughly 290 districts). A statewide commission would approve them, as could districts that apply to be authorizers, with commission members appointed by the governor and the leaders of both legislative chambers.

Proponents say strict oversight would mandate that charter-management groups maintain high quality or lose their schools in five years and that the cap on charters allow for the state to manage their growth carefully. Proponents would also focus on low-income and minority students, they say, who have been outperformed significantly by white and Asian students in terms of graduation rates and on tests intended to satisfy requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act such as the now-defunct Washington Assessments of Student Learning.

Charter advocates hope that this time around voters are more aware of the problems facing Seattle's low-income students and their struggles to succeed.

Sammamish resident Bob Seidensticker is a recent convert to charter schools. He said they represent freedom for students in need and for teachers alike and divulged that he would nevertheless be voting for Mr. Inslee despite the Democrat's opposition to charters. "The realities of political life are ugly," said Mr. Seidensticker.

Charter proponents said they often hear from those who fear that charters equate to, or would lead to, school privatization. But Valerie Tarico of Seattle said the initiative would inoculate public schools from things like the private-school vouchers in Arizona.

"Effective, functioning, innovative public schools, which is what charters bring us, create a bulwark against privatization," said Ms. Tarico, a supporter of the "Yes on 1240" campaign.

Still, she conceded that support from prominent business leaders in the state, such as Microsoft founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen and parents of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, were being used effectively by charter opponents to paint the proposal as the brainchild of elites.

Total contributions to the "Yes on 1240" campaign add up to $8.3 million, according to the National Institute on Money in State Politics, a non-profit based in Helena, Mont. In fall 2004, pro-charter donations totaled $3.8 million, the Seattle Times reported that year.

The two anti-charter campaigns, meanwhile, have raised $275,000 between them, including donations from the state teachers' union, an affiliate of the National Education Association. That pales, however, in comparison with 2004, when $1.3 million had been raised by early October to fight charters.

'Creating Two Systems'

Chris Holmquist said he had taught in public schools for more than 25 years, but this Columbus Day was the first time he had ever worked a political phone bank. He said that Mr. Inslee would see issues through teachers' eyes while protecting the existing education system against charters.

"You're creating two systems, and neither one is going to be funded appropriately," he said while taking a break from the phones in Kent, south of Seattle.

As for Mr. McKenna, who supports performance pay and abolishing last-hired-first-fired labor rules, Mr. Holmquist saw parallels to another Republican governor elected in 2010, and fears Mr. McKenna would move against collective bargaining itself. "He's going to talk one way and behave another way if he becomes governor, just like Scott Walker did in Wisconsin."

On the charter issue, teachers were quick to cite existing schools where teachers, parents, and community members have reshaped the curriculum, labor contracts, and learning environments without charters. Examples include the extended-learning-day program at Lincoln Center in Tacoma, and iGrad, a school in Kent that caters to returning dropouts and partners with a local community college.

Funding Questions Raised

But perhaps the most prominent argument used by teachers is a lack of funding.

In its January ruling in McCleary v. Washington, the state Supreme Court ruled the state had been violating its own constitution by not adequately funding education, in part by relying too heavily on local levies, and said lawmakers must agree on a solution by 2018. Estimates on the annual additional amount needed to fix the problem range from $1 billion to as high as $4.1 billion over the next two years.

That last estimate comes from state schools chief Randy Dorn, who says Washington students are doing well on academic measures overall, such as the SAT. But such numbers will erode if state funding remains anemic, he argued.

"The support and the morale [in public schools] is getting thinner and thinner," said Mr. Dorn, who opposes the charter measure. "I do not support that certain segments of the population can self-select for a charter school."

At a campaign stop in Lacey, not far from Olympia, the state capital, Mr. Inslee said he wasn't looking at charters through a "conspiratorial lens" that envisions vouchers and privatization. But he said charters would dilute resources for "strapped" public schools.

'Seeds of Innovation'

"We are a chock-a-block full with the seeds of innovation. I want to see those seeds spread and sprout … I think we have the beginning of an innovation revolution in our schools," Mr. Inslee said. He has also criticized Mr. McKenna for saying the state should explore transferring wealth from rich districts to poor ones and creating a larger state education levy to substitute for local taxes. The idea represents an attempt to satisfy theMcCleary v. Washington ruling and provide stability for school finance.

But on a visit to the Muckleshoot Tribal School in Auburn, Mr. McKenna blasted his opponent for "cynical" campaign tactics in attacking him for a redistribution proposal initiated by Democrats. He also voiced support for the charter push.

"The fact that so many other states have adopted them and have been expanding them tells us they can be useful alternatives for parents and their children, and teachers who get involved in starting them," he said.

Despite his support for policies that WEA members eye with distaste, like eliminating the last-hired, first-fired personnel policy, Mr. McKenna said teachers would be involved in negotiations over future education issues and the fight to stop K-12 funding from shrinking as a share of the state budget.

When Elway Research, a Seattle-based polling firm, asked state residents whether education issues in the state gave Mr. Inslee or Mr. McKenna a bigger advantage, 31 percent gave the edge to Mr. Inslee, while 30 percent gave it to Mr. McKenna. The rest gave neither an advantage on the issue.

Advocates and Arguments

During a public-affairs forum at the Horizon House retirement home here last week, Lisa Macfarlane, the executive director of Democrats for Education Reform's Washington state chapter, stressed that charter schools are public schools. "Washington is the only state in the country with an urban corridor that does not have charter schools," Ms. Macfarlane said. (Democrats for Education Reform, a non-profit group, has bucked the traditional Democratic establishment and unions on some education issues.)

But charters in other states have encountered a litany of problems, from investigations over civil rights complaints about their mishandling of special education students, to financial guidelines that have not been followed, said Melissa Westbrook, an advocate with the "No on 1240" campaign.

Afterward, Horizon House resident Rosella Broyles remained unconvinced by the pro-charter arguments: "I'm not terribly clear what the controls are for charter schools. … It's going to divide the pot.""[It] offers no mandates that guarantee anything for at-risk students. It is new spending with no new revenue," Ms. Westbrook told the audience.

But her neighbor Ned Lang sounded a note of desperation for students who are underserved.

"It's a wonderful opportunity to experiment," he said "If it doesn't work, get rid of it."

Coverage of leadership, expanded learning time, and arts learning is supported in part by a grant from The Wallace Foundation, at www.wallacefoundation.org.

A Lawyer Offers Good Advice to the President

From Diane Ravitch

Dear President Obama:

I am writing to you as a fellow magna cum laude Harvard Law grad (’73) and fellow Democrat.

Please reconsider two of your Administration’s Race-to-the-Top education policies – 1) high-stakes testing, and 2) charter schools.  Under superficial analysis, these policies appear sensible; under in-depth analysis, they are destructive.

In developing school reform policies, the first step is to identify the problems.  In the US, most suburban schools are doing OK.  The problems exist in the low-SES schools, particularly in the inner-cities.  Veteran teachers and principals in the low-SES schools – writing in first-person books, on education blogs, and newspaper websites – routinely cite two main problems – students reading far below grade level and classroom misconduct – and two additional problems – chronic absenteeism and chronic tardiness.  In the low-SES schools, these problems are endemic; in the suburban schools, these problems exist, but they are occasional rather than endemic.

Rational school reform should, therefore, focus on these problems that are endemic in the poorly-performing low-SES schools but exist only occasionally in the well-performing suburban schools.  Such rational school reform would directly address the problems that plague the low-SES schools.  We should be testing and implementing reforms in the low-SES schools regarding reading skills, student behavior, and attendance.  Unfortunately, Race-to-the-Top largely ignores these problems.

High-stakes testing (and the resulting teacher discharge) address a different problem – that is, the problem posed by bad teachers.  However, bad teachers are not responsible for the poor performance of the low-SES schools.  The suburban schools are doing OK and there is no reason to believe that teacher quality in the suburban schools is uniformly stronger than in the low-SES schools (particularly given the flood of hyper-talented Teach for America grads into the low-SES schools during the past 15 years).  If bad teachers was a major problem, we’d see the low-performing schools distributed roughly evenly between the suburbs and the low-SES areas.

Moreover, assuming arguendo that identifying/discharging bad teachers would significantly improve low-SES schools, high-stakes testing is an awful way to identify/discharge bad teachers.  First, high-stakes testing is unreliable – it yields too many false positives and too many false negatives.  There are many non-teacher-controlled variables that impact a teacher’s student test scores under even the most sophisticated value-added model – i.e., the number of “difficult” students who disrupt the class and require extra attention, the class size and the teacher’s total pupil load, the number of different preparation the teacher has, whether the teacher has taught the course/grade before, whether the teacher is teaching within his/her core expertise, the amount of classroom support (aides), and the amount of central office support (regarding discipline, etc.).  Second, high-stakes testing has major adverse side effects.  It encourages teaching to the test, encourages narrowing the curriculum, encourages cheating, discourages teacher-teacher cooperation, and, most importantly, discourages teachers from teaching “difficult”/high-risk students.

And, there are more productive ways to identify/discharge bad teachers.  For example, Montgomery County, MD (a large mostly suburban school system near Washington, DC) has successfully used a peer-review approach (called “PAR”) for over 10 years.  PAR has resulted in the discharge or resignation-in-lieu-of-review of over 500 teachers; the teachers union supports PAR; the teachers view the system as fair; few of the discharges have been challenged; and there is no high-stakes testing with its adverse side effects.

Charter schools, like high-stakes testing/teacher discharge, fail to address the problems that plague the low-SES schools.  Instead of solving the problems, charters simply remove some of the children – the children of the parents who are functional enough to investigate charters, complete the application process, and provide the daily transportation usually required for charter students – from low-SES neighborhood schools.  By enrolling only the children of the more functional parents, the charters largely avoid – rather than solve – the low-SES school problems of students reading far below grade level, classroom misconduct, absenteeism, and tardiness.  And, by siphoning off the children of the more functional parents, the charters increase the concentration in the neighborhood schools of children of the less functional parents – thereby exacerbating the problems that plague the low-SES schools.

The charter approach – protecting the children of functional parents by sacrificing the children of the dysfunctional parents – will ultimately impose huge social costs on society as the children of the dysfunctional parents become drop-outs, teenage mothers, barely-literate unskilled workers, welfare recipients, and criminals.  A far better approach would be to abandon the charters and instead implement school reforms directly targeting the problems that plague the low-SES schools.

Please stop the high-stakes-testing/teacher-discharge and charter reforms that are damaging, rather than improving, our low-SES schools.  Please encourage the low-SES schools to implement reforms directly addressing the problems that plague the low-SES schools.

Sincerely,

Charter Schools Sold Like an Investment

Charter Schools Sold Like an Investment to Wealthy Foreigners Looking for a Green Card

For the wealthy, and alternative to the federal immigration system.

October 11, 2012  |  

 

 

Who knew it was possible to come to the United States without dealing with the inefficient immigration system? Apparently, a bunch of wealthy Chinese investors.

According to a Miami Today report last week, these Chinese financiers are taking advantage of the U.S. EB-5, an Immigrant Investor Program that sets aside certain visas for investors who stimulate economic growth within the United States. The investors are required to invest at least $1 million and create at least 10 full-time jobs for U.S. residents. The EB-5 process has therefore been dubbed the “green card via red carpet.”

So what are these Chinese financiers investing millions of dollars in as a way to win their green cards? Evidently, charter schools. In fact, they have invested $30 million in charter schools in Florida alone. And according to the report, they are planning to invest three times that amount in the next year.

This comes at a time when more and more investors are viewing charter schools as secure investments. Just a few months ago on CNBC, David Brain, President and CEO Entertainment Properties Trust, a real estate investment firm, praised charter schools as reliable investments.

Speaking about these educational institutions in business terms, Brain said:

It’s a very stable business, very recession-resistant. It’s a very high-demand product. There’s 400,000 kids on waiting lists for charter schools ... the industry’s growing about 12-14% a year. … It’s a public payer, the state is the payer …  and if you do business with states with solid treasuries, then it’s a very solid business.

Meanwhile, Florida’s State Board of Education announced a new plan this week, which aims to double charter school enrollment in the state, from 9 percent enrollment to 17 percent enrollment within the next six years.

Yet, research still shows that charter schools don’t deliver superior learning results in most cases. The Center for Research on Education Outcomes’ 2009 data shows that almost half of the nation’s charters had learning results no different from local public schools. Seventeen percent of charters provided superior results, while 37 percent provided worse results. Florida’s charters actually stood out as yielding significantly worse results than public schools. But, when there’s room to profit in education, through wealth or even a visa, whether or not charter schools are effective doesn’t seem to matter. 

Alyssa Figueroa is an editorial fellow at AlterNet. She is a recent Ithaca College graduate who double-majored in journalism and politics. Follow her on Twitter @alyssa_fig.