"Alt.Ed gone bad"? That's far more of an attack (and clickbait) than the article's title. As for discussion, nothing wrong with posting your opinion in the comments -- we all can discuss.
Hi...So, if you read the article, it does talk about how charter schools in CA are managed and how extensive govt involvement is and how there is no oversight. So I still stand by my title. Maybe I could add ‘California’ (if I have enough words left) but otherwise I am comfortable with my choice of words for change in title.
I honestly don’t have the bandwidth for this. It’s my opinion. You could have changed my mind. You didn’t.
Unless a mod changes it, its likely not going to change. Re: my stance. I stand by my original impression of the article and I can live with the title I gave. It encapsulated the import in as few words as possible and I am ok with it.
I think I am done here. I appreciate you taking the time to share your opinion. But I don’t know what else to say because I remain unconvinced by your argument. Perhaps just continue with the discussion about charter schools instead? Have a great rest of the weekend.
I read the article (well, 75% so far). It's primarily how this couple gamed the system; I don't see that it casts the LAUSD policy or leaders in a bad light.
We all know any sufficiently byzantine bureaucracy can be gamed by motivated players. Such is the case here, it seems.
Contrast with my son's school: it's well-run, has strong leadership and wonderful teachers ... and they still have to work hard, year over year, to stay right with the LAUSD policies.
Tl;dr This story isn't about charter schools so much as it is a public outing of the weirdo couple who runs (and profits from) one specific charter in the LA system.
[..]Twenty-seven years ago, when California became just the second state to enact a law establishing charter schools, state leaders framed the experiment as a modest one that would allow only 100 schools at first. Free-market advocates saw charters as a way to empower all students to choose from a variety of schools. Other supporters envisioned them as laboratories for testing new teaching methods and then bringing successes back to traditional public schools.
The new, privately operated schools would be government-funded and tuition-free. They would unleash creativity by liberating schools from many of the state education code’s rules. But to ensure that they lived up to their promises and spent public money properly, they would have to be vetted and overseen by governmental bodies, beginning with the school districts in which they were located.
That was sufficient check and balance for the civic-minded individuals who ran many charter schools. But as the number of charters in the state grew, the same law that allowed many founders to try new ideas with great success created opportunities for others.
The law allowed for a multitude of different bodies to serve as “authorizers,” watching over the new schools. It gave oversight power not just to the state board, but also to each of the state’s many school districts and county boards of education — regardless of whether they had the ability or inclination to properly police the independently run schools.[..]
[..]About 330 government entities have the authority to authorize and supervise charters in California. By contrast, Texas, the state with the second-largest number of charter schools, has 18, according to its state education agency. New York has two active authorizers.
Los Angeles Unified, the nation’s second-largest school district, has an entire division devoted to overseeing the charters it authorizes and is considered one of the state’s most robust monitors. But the roster of charter authorizers also includes school districts with colorful histories of corruption and financial mismanagement. Some are so small that they have fewer than a dozen employees in all, with insufficient resources to be effective watchdogs.[..]
I didn’t want the discussion to be about the couple but about charter schools.