Civil Courts Deciding New Orleans Charter-School Segregation Issue

June 19, 2017 By

Civil lawsuits are as much a part of America’s charter school landscape as blackboards and parental ire, and the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans is one of the latest battlegrounds. At issue is the Greater Grace Charter Academy a bit west of New Orleans that is 93 percent black enrollment, but where the population is only 62 percent black, according to the Associated Press.

In a report posted on the NOLA news website, the AP says that “… Louisiana’s education board approved the school’s charter and U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman allowed the opening last August. He noted the school has a non-discriminatory enrollment policy. He said blocking the opening would punish students who chose to enroll there. Opponents argue that approving a nearly one-race school ‘is contrary to the goals of desegregation.'”

Arguments are expected to be heard this month. Read the AP report here:
Charter school segregation lawsuit goes to U.S. appeals court

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Education Nominee Brings School Choice To The Federal Spotlight

January 18, 2017 By
Children hold up “Parent Revolution” signs during a press conference held next to Desert Trails Preparatory Academy in Adelanto in 2013. Parents used a state law to transform their local low-performing public elementary school into a not-for-profit charter campus. (Los Angeles Times)

Children hold up “Parent Revolution” signs during a press conference held next to Desert Trails Preparatory Academy in Adelanto in 2013. Parents used a state law to transform their local low-performing public elementary school into a not-for-profit charter campus. (Los Angeles Times)

As Democrats leveled sharp questions at Betsy DeVos, president-elect Donald Trump’s education nominee, this week, they stressed her decades of support for the charter school movement. Clearly, the Trump Administration and the GOP-controlled Congress will make “school choice” a spotlight issue, including the “parent trigger” movement that didn’t really come up in the DeVos questioning, perhaps because her efforts have mostly been in Michigan.

Parent trigger is the idea that parents can more or less take over a failing school. A half-dozen states have some level of parent trigger law, but the one that’s been most lawsuit-tested is California’s. The Golden State actually passed the nation’s first such law in 2010, and of course litigation came shortly after.

Natasha Lindstron, a respected reporter who has covered the California Parent Trigger since its passage, offers a good overview report here http://hechingerreport.org/parent-trigger-showdowns-loom-nationwide/

And if you’d like to see how The Los Angeles Times, which supported the original parent trigger legislation, feels about it now, check that out here:

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-parent-trigger-20150803-story.html

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New SoCal ‘Stealth Charter Schools’ Bring Confusion, Prompt Litigation

December 16, 2015 By
They are calling them “stealth charters” and the San Diego Union-Tribune newspaper reports that “… San Diego County has seen a rise in ‘out-of-district’ charters in recent years — mostly independent-study programs authorized by small districts in the eastern reaches of the region. The arrangements can be appealing because the authorizing districts don’t stand to lose students, and they receive a percentage of the charter’s revenue in exchange for varying degrees of oversight and often administrative support services… regardless of what’s driving this trend, it has sparked bitter turf wars that have pitted districts against one another and stirred costly litigation.”
 
The challenge is that charters that are authorized in one district can set up shop in another. It’s a whole new front in the Golden State’s school wars.
 
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L.A. School Group Offers List Of ‘Best Practices’ Facilities

December 14, 2015 By
The LA Times 12/17/15 article reports, "Sarah Angel, a regional director for the California Charter Schools Assn., praises charters at a recent forum on the future of Los Angeles public education. A new group is trying to launch more of these schools. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)"

The LA Times 12/17/15 article reports, “Sarah Angel, a regional director for the California Charter Schools Assn., praises charters at a recent forum on the future of Los Angeles public education. A new group is trying to launch more of these schools. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)”

The educational reform group “Great Public Schools Now” has issued a list of possible model schools for Los Angeles County, and the L.A. Times reports that the full list includes 23 magnet programs, 19 charter schools and seven traditional neighborhood schools. The Times says that “… each has a low-income enrollment of at least 75% and more than 60% of students met state targets in English.”
 
Charter schools, especially those crated by teh “parent trigger” that allows parents to take over private schools, have been a civil litigation magnet in recent years. The Times report includes defining terms: “Charters are independently managed and exempt from some rules that govern traditional schools. Most are nonunion. Magnets are district operated and typically offer a special academic program. They were set up initially to encourage voluntary integration.”
 
And the paper repeats that “… questions still surround Great Public Schools Now, including the names of the financial backers and how much money they hope to raise. A confidential draft proposal, obtained by The Times, called for raising $490 million. Critics have questioned whether the underlying goal of the original draft plan — which called for more than doubling the number of charter schools — has changed. That draft was apparently intended for supporters and potential donors.”
 
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California Columnist: Lawsuit Likely If Parent-Trigger School Index Nixed

November 23, 2015 By
Since its passage in 2010, California’s “parent trigger” charter school movement has been the subject of litigation, perhaps most notably in the landmark “Palm Lane Elementary School” case in Anaheim. The “trigger” laws allow parents to demand reform at failing schools, including converting the school to a charter school. The California move triggered a handful of other states to take up similar provisions.
 
Now, says Sacramento Bee columnist Dan Walters, Golden State lawmakers are considering dropping one part of that parent trigger legislation, the so-called Academic Performance Index, or “API.” The standardized testing program was passed before the parent trigger, but was eventually linked to the controversial charter school efforts. Walters says removing the API will likely mean yet another lawsuit.

 

He writes that “… Gloria Romero, the former Democratic state senator who wrote the parent trigger law, says that if the API disappears, the Legislature should be duty-bound to provide a new performance measure for parents. However, the staff recommendation before the state school board is to eliminate the API and “identify the obsolete and outdated references to the API that need to be removed” as part of its repeal, implying that the parent trigger law should also die.”
 
If the API is repealed without a replacement measure for parent trigger, Romero tells Walters, a lawsuit would be the next step, which would not be unusual. He notes that “… school reform and civil rights groups have often sued, usually successfully, in their battles with the establishment over accountability and other flashpoint issues.”
 
 
 
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Charter Schools Efforts Play Out In Courts

September 29, 2015 By
Dan Walters, the Sacramento Bee columnist who is picked up by other papers statewide, has noted the ongoing school reform battles that usually end up in civil court. In the context of state officials handing off to local jurisdictions, he noted that they “… haven’t succeeded in persuading judges that they can wash their hands of responsibility, most recently in a suit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of high-risk students, alleging that they hadn’t received the attention state and federal law require.”
 
“A state cannot abdicate its supervisory responsibilities by ignoring credible evidence of persistent or significant district noncompliance,” Los Angeles Superior Court Judge James Chalfant declared in a recent 45-page decision. “If districts fail to provide services and the state has notice of this failure, the state has a duty … to take reasonable action.”
 
Faced with that, writes Walters, state officials backed down and agreed to monitor what districts are doing for high-risk kids. The writer does not make this point, but the column offers an example of how much civil courts have become policy-setting bodies. Read the story here.
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