Thousands of people marched through the streets of San Fernando and Pacoima on Saturday, calling on their leaders at LA Unified and Sacramento to support the charter school movement. The “Rally in the Valley” began at Vaughn Next Century Learning Center in San Fernando, which was the first charter school to be started at LA Unified and the first conversion charter school in the nation.

California Charter School Association Families, which hosted the event, estimated the crowd to be at 3,000. After the march the crowd heard speeches from a number of elected leaders, including LA Unified board member Monica Ratliff and Assemblywoman Patty Lopez, and charter leaders, including Yvonne Chan, who founded Vaughn Next Century Learning Center.

Watch the video for highlights of the event.

They don’t take special education students. They screen during enrollment for students with high academics. They are funded by billionaires out to bankrupt the unions and take over LA Unified. They are unregulated monsters run amok on our school system.

There is no lack of accusations that are frequently hurled at independent charter schools. Since the first independent charter school was started in LA Unified in 1993, charters have over time become one of the most polarizing issues on the educational landscape. Whether it be their financial impact, enrollment practices or educational philosophies, there seems to be no shortage of critics.

• Read more about charters: How charters went from a ‘novelty’ to dominate the conversation of LAUSD, 9 questions and answers about LA’s charters and Alliance College-Ready Public Schools: A replicable model or unique success?

Last week the Washington Post ran an article that was heavily critical of charters in California, and it also cited an August report from the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California which found that 20 percent of all charter schools in California had enrollment policies in place that violate state and federal law.

While some of the accusations in the ACLU report are true of some charters or were true of some in the past, other accusations that are commonly thrown at charters are hard to prove one way or another or boil down to philosophical differences. In light of the recent high-profile criticism of California and LA charters, here is what several prominent charter leaders in Los Angeles had to say about the frequent accusations that are made against the charter movement.

Accusation: The ACLU report found many instances of enrollment violations regarding students’ academic performance, English proficiency and immigration status, despite the fact that charters are not allowed by law to consider these factors. 

Jacqueline Elliot, co-founder of PUC Schools: “Our movement is big. It has gotten huge, in fact, in LA and California and across the nation. And frankly, I don’t think we can expect that we are going to have perfection across the nation, and we are going to have charter schools that are doing things we don’t like and that are perhaps not legal, and it is our responsibility in the charter movement and also of the authorizers, which is how the legislation is set up, to weed out and stop those practices. But I do think that the vast majority of charter schools are run by dedicated educators who have integrity and who will abide by the law.”

Caprice Young, founder of the California Charter Schools Association (CCSA) and CEO of Magnolia Public Schools: “If I did a Lexus Nexus Google search of every abuse at every school district in the state of California, the list would be about 40 times that long… What I would say in response to (the ACLU report) is that charters are required to have their entire enrollment procedure approved by whoever their authorizer happens to be. And almost all of the schools identified in the ACLU report were actually implementing the enrollment procedures that had been approved by their local school districts. So the issue is not charters, in so much as if they are complying with what they put in their charter, but the issue is really more a question of oversight and if the school districts feel comfortable having some guidelines in the context of charter school lotteries.”

Cristina de Jesus, president and CEO of Green Dot Public Schools California: “I think it’s unfortunate that a few bad actors are being used to paint the entire charter sector with a broad brush. They are not representative of the great majority of charters who are actually changing the odds for kids across the country every day. I can say in general, Green Dot feels that bad actors should suffer the consequences if they are employing policies and procedures that are not on the up and up.”

Jason Mandell, spokesperson for CCSA: “We are still dealing with in some cases myths that are very much outdated or maybe were never true, and so it continues to be an issue. If a small number of schools have an issue, all charters tend to be grouped together in how they are reported on in the media. Something happens at one charter school and that charter school speaks for all charters in some cases. With district schools, people don’t necessarily group them all together in that way.”

Accusation: An early draft of what became the Great Public Schools Now plan to fund successful school models aimed to enroll half of all LA Unified students in charter schools, something critics said would threaten the solvency of the district. The plan, which originated with the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, has since changed to include other school models beyond charters, but the draft plan has led to the accusation that billionaires are out to bankrupt the district. 

Elliot: “I would say to keep in mind that plan came from one person, and that was Broad. You should not condemn a big, successful charter community because what one philanthropist published as his plan. That was him, that wasn’t me and that wasn’t my colleagues. I mean, let’s keep perspective here. Anybody can say what they want to say, but it is called the ‘Broad Plan,’ it is not called ‘the plan of all the charter leaders in Los Angeles.’ I think people need to keep that in perspective. It was not wise. It was a bad choice. It hurt us terribly.”

Young: “In the 1990s, when the Annenberg Foundation gave LAUSD half a billion dollars and the local business and civic community matched that donation two-to-one, no one was screaming, ‘Don’t let the billionaires take over our schools.’ The fact is that in order to have strong schools in Los Angeles, we need everyone involved, from small business owners to big business owners. From nonprofit leaders to churches and synagogues. All of the population of LA needs to be putting its whole strength into the schools. I’m just grateful that our business community is willing to continue to invest in public schools.”

Accusation: The early draft of the Great Public Schools Now plan had critics saying it — and charter growth in general — would threaten the financial solvency of the district. This has led to accusations that charters fight any attempt to limit or control their growth. 

Elliot: “I think it’s a tough situation for them and I get it, I understand if I was in their seat and I thought that the charter movement was going to become so huge, huge, huge that it was going to suck more seats until we are extinguished and the whole city will be charter, that’s the fear. I don’t think the whole city should be charter. I think we are just spending all this energy fighting with one another.”

Young: “I can’t imagine why anyone would want to limit the growth of any charter schools or any high-quality schools. As long as we have schools that are not successful for our kids, we need more schools, charter schools or specialized schools of one sort or another. We need more schools that do the job. And I think the financial situation of the district actually has almost nothing to do with the charter schools, and that is easily documented. And because of that, it’s an excuse and instead of focusing on fixing their financial challenges, they say oh, don’t have more charter schools.”

Accusation: The LA teachers union, UTLA, often uses the term “unregulated” when talking about charters and says there needs to be more oversight of charters because they are unregulated compared to district schools. 

Elliot: “I I think when people say charters are unregulated it means they are doing whatever they want with complete freedom and flexibility with no rules applying, but nothing could be farther from the truth. Charters come up for renewal every five years, and if there is any group of schools that feels they are being watched and are accountable it is charter schools. And not just because they come up for renewal every five years, but because we have an authorizer that keeps a close eye on us. They come in and do oversight visits every year. They continually ask for our financials and are watching everything and going over it with a fine-tooth comb much more so than what happens in the district.”

Young: “Bureaucracies oversee things in the way that they know how. And the charter school law is really all about holding schools accountable for student outcomes and for fiscal stability. And the only way that the school district knows how to hold anybody accountable is how many mountains of paper they have turned in.”

De Jesus: “I think one of the big myths out there about charters is that they are unregulated, which is simply not true. We have an annual oversight visit for every single school, whether the school is high performing or not. And we also have to go before the board every five years to see if we deserve another shot. And when do regular public schools have to go through that kind of scrutiny? Hardly ever.”

Accusation: Some charters, especially in the startup phase, lack the facilities of a traditional school and hold classes in churches and other non-traditional settings. This has led to the accusation that some charters deprive students of a well-rounded school experience by lacking athletic fields, auditoriums and other traditional amenities. 

Elliot: “I have really evolved on this over the years. I always used to say that it doesn’t matter where you teach, you could be in a little red schoolhouse in the middle of a field and you can have great results, and I believe that to be true. However, I do believe that children deserve fields and they deserve a gymnasium. They deserve to have a performance area and a multipurpose room, especially because that’s what the other children at traditional schools get.”

Charter school supporters outside LA Unified headquarters in 2012. (Courtesy: CCSA)

Over 2,000 parents, students and supporters of charter schools are expected to attend a “Rally in the Valley” on Saturday to advocate for pro-charter policies, as well as to celebrate the 25th anniversary of charter schools coming to LA Unified. The first several charter schools to open in the district were in the San Fernando Valley, including Vaughn Next Century Learning Center in Pacoima, where the rally will begin.

The rally, which is being hosted by California Charter Schools Association Families, will include a march from Vaughn Next Century Learning Center at 9:30 a.m. to nearby Vaughn G3 (Green Global Generation) before a public program that will feature speeches from LA Unified school board member Monica Ratliff and Congressman Tony Cardenas. Board members Monica Garcia and Ref Rodriguez are also scheduled to be in attendance, as well as Assemblymember Raul Bocanegra and the four candidates running to replace Ratliff on the LA Unified board. Ratliff, who represents the East San Fernando Valley where the Vaughn schools are located, announced in June that she will be running for a seat on the Los Angeles City Council.

“Ratliff has proven herself to be a thoughtful, independent voice on the board and so results focused. She has been a model for what her community is looking for from a school board member,” said Jason Mandell, spokesperson for the California Charter Schools Association.

The rally comes after a year of increased tension between LA Unified’s charter supporters and traditional school supporters, as well as some more peaceful moves recently. In February, 23 charter operators sent a letter to the school board complaining about what they said was increased scrutiny of charter schools during the application and renewal process. Another point of conflict was an early draft of what became the Great Public Schools Now plan to fund successful school models at LA Unified. The early draft called for expanding charter schools to enroll half of all the district’s students in eight years and was met with strong opposition, including from board President Steve Zimmer, but has since been amended to include magnets, district schools and other successful models.

Since taking office in January, Superintendent Michelle King has sought to ease tensions between charters and traditional supporters. Her efforts culminated in a “Promising Practices” forum in July that brought together charter leaders and traditional school leaders to share ideas and practices. At the forum, Zimmer gave a speech that was seen by many charter leaders as a call for détente when he said both sides should “work together” to make students’ dreams come true.

Despite the forum, conflict still exists. The LA teachers union, UTLA, recently launched a media campaign that includes an anti-charter agenda and also announced a 10-point plan that includes a push to change state law to increase oversight of charters.

Aside from celebrating charter schools, the rally “will also call upon elected representatives in local and state government to support pro-charter policies, including the expansion of high-quality charters, better facilities for charter students, and an end to the politics and rhetoric challenging parents’ right to choose the best public school for their children,” according to a press release from California Charter Schools Association Families.

This is part of a series looking at the various types of schools in LA Unified. Read more on charters, magnet schools and affiliated charters. 

Question: What is an independent charter school?

Answer: Independent charter schools at LA Unified are publicly financed but independently run educational institutions. Charters are authorized and overseen by a local school district, county school district or the state. The schools must come before their authorizing board every five years for renewal, and their authorizers make sure the school’s finances and educational approach are in order.

Charter schools are tuition free and are open to all students who apply. By law they may not discriminate for enrollment based on academic performance, race, economic background or special education status. Some have waiting lists and enrollment is based on a lottery.

Q: How many independent charter schools are there at LA Unified?

A: At the beginning of the 2016-17 school year there were 228 independent charter schools authorized by LA Unified serving over 107,000 students, or roughly 16 percent of the student body. LA Unified has the most charter schools and students of any district in the nation. In the 2014-15 school year, there were an estimated 41,830 students on charter waiting lists at LA Unified, according to the California Charter Schools Association.

In the state of California, there were 1,228 independent charter schools in the 2015-16 school year, and roughly 3 percent of them were for-profit, according to CCSA. No charters at LA Unified are for-profit.

Q: Do charter school students perform better than students at traditional schools?

A: On the 2015 and 2016 California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress (CAASPP) standardized tests, independent charters outperformed the district in all key categories.

On the 2015 tests, 40 percent of independent charter students met or exceeded the English language arts (ELA) test standard, compared to 33 percent of district students. On the math test, 27 percent of charter students met of exceeded the standard, compared to 25 percent of district students. On the 2016 tests, 46 percent of charter students met or exceeded the ELA standard, compared to 39 percent for traditional schools, and 30 percent of charter students met or exceeded the math standard, compared to 28 percent at district schools.

Q: What about other metrics, like graduation rates and A-G completion?

A: Charters also outpace the district in graduation rates and completion of A-G courses, which are a series of required classes that must be passed with a C or better in order to be accepted into California’s public universities.

According to the California Charter Schools Association, charter schools had a cohort graduation rate of 84 percent in 2014-15, compared to 72 percent for the district. And A-G completion with a C or better for charters was 78 percent in 2013-14, compared to 28 percent for the district. However, the district has predicted large gains in A-G completion last school year due in part to a $15 million credit recovery program, and preliminary data show the graduation rate will be 75 percent.

Q: Are there demographic differences that should be taken into consideration when comparing these numbers?

A: Yes. In some areas, charters and the district match up closely on demographics, and in some areas they do not.

One key difference is in special education. Recent numbers show that in the 2015-16 school year, special education made up 11.04 percent of enrollment at charters and 11.96 percent at the district after years of gains by charters. But there is a key difference in that the district still has a larger number of students with moderate to severe disabilities, who are more costly to educate. The district’s enrollment of students with moderate to severe disabilities in 2015-16 was 4.72 percent, compared to 2.1 percent for charters.

On race and key subgroups, independent charters and the district match up closely. See this map of the location of charter schools by poverty level (courtesy EdDataZone) and this map showing charter locations in neighborhoods by race.

The below graphics outline how charters and district schools match up demographically:

Q: Why are some people and unions against charter schools?

A: The majority of LA Unified’s independent charter schools do not have union labor, so teachers unions tend to oppose their existence. Charter schools also receive their funding directly from the state, so as the number of charter schools in the district has grown, the operating budget of LA Unified has shrunk, causing some school board members and educational leaders to see charters as a threat to the stability of public education.

Q: What is an affiliated charter? Is that the same as an independent charter?

A: No, they are not the same. An affiliated charter is still directly overseen by the district, and the district controls its budget. But the “affiliated” status gives school leaders more flexibility. Click here to learn more.

Q: What is a charter management organization (CMO)?

A: A CMO is an organization that operates multiple charter schools, while a freestanding charter school is a standalone school not directly associated with any other school. According to CCSA, at LA Unified in the 2015-16 school year, there were 170 independent charters at LA Unified that were part of a CMO and 51 that were freestanding. Click here to see a map from EdDataZone for details on where CMOs and freestanding schools are located.

Q: Are charters growing at LA Unified?

A: Yes, charters are growing, and more have been added to the district every year since the Charter School Act of 1992 was passed. This graphic charts their growth:

For the second year in a row, LA Unified’s independent charter schools outperformed the district’s traditional schools on California’s standardized math and English language arts (ELA) tests, according to data released Monday by the California Charter Schools Association. The district’s magnets topped both. 

The district’s independent charters saw 46 percent of its students meet or exceed the standard on the ELA test, versus 39 percent for the district’s traditional schools. On the math test, 30 percent of independent charters met or exceeded the standard, versus 28 percent for traditional schools.

LA Unified has more charter students than any other district in the country. Last school year, when the tests were administered, the district had 101,000 charter students in 221 schools, making up 16 percent of the district enrollment.

Independent charters saw growth on the tests over last year, which was the first year the Common-Core aligned California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress (CAASPP) was given. Charters were not alone in seeing growth, as both the district and the state also saw improvement over last year. The district’s independent charters had a 7 percentage point improvement on the ELA test and a 4 percentage point improvement on the math test, while traditional schools saw a 6 percentage point improvement on the ELA test and a 3 percentage point improvement on math.

“We are encouraged that charter schools increased the percent of students meeting and exceeding standards in both ELA and math from 2015 to 2016,” according to a CCSA statement.

Charters also demonstrated a high level of performance over traditional schools in some key subgroups. In some instances, charter subgroups outperformed the district’s overall traditional school average. (See graphic. Click the math button to change the numbers from English language arts to math.)

Demographically, independent charter students and traditional students who were tested matched up closely. The tests are given to students in grades 3 through 8 and in 11th grade. Of the students tested, 82 percent of charter students qualified as low-income, compared to 80 percent for traditional schools, according to LA Unified. Charters also match up closely on ethnicity with traditional schools, in particular for Latinos, with 74 percent for charters and 73 percent for traditional schools. Independent charters had 11 percent disabled students, compared to 12 percent for the district, and 19 percent English learners at charters compared to 18 percent at traditional schools.

As it did last year, LA Unified released numbers that showed its magnet schools outperformed the district’s independent charters, although the demographics on the two do not match up closely. Magnets had a lower number of low-income students (69 percent), students with disabilities (6 percent) and English learners (5 percent).

“This is another accomplishment to celebrate as we move closer to our goal of preparing all of our graduates for success,” LA Unified Superintendent Michelle King said in a statement. “We are working hard to identify strategies that support student achievement. We want all of our schools – no matter what model – to continue to make progress in helping students fulfill their potential. But what is great about LA Unified is that we believe in all of our schools and all of our students.”

Statewide, the results were more mixed for independent charters, the CCSA data showed. Although the demographics match up relatively closely, charter students trailed the state in the percentage meeting or exceeding the standard on the math test, 35 percent to 37 percent, but outperformed on the ELA test, 50 percent to 49 percent.

CCSA also presented numbers comparing LA’s independent charters to traditional schools, but removed affiliated charters from the equation. There were 53 affiliated charters in operation last year. The schools are primarily located in wealthier, whiter neighborhoods, and while they have many of the freedoms granted charters in how the schools are run, they adhere to all district collective bargaining agreements and also receive their budgets directly from the district.

When affiliated charters are removed, the scores for the district’s traditional schools drop.

Tuesday’s school board meeting while the union report was delivered.

* UPDATED May 13

As district officials and other analysts pick apart the UTLA-funded study released Tuesday that claims that independent charter schools drain half a billion dollars from LA Unified, the district’s own numbers show LA Unified actually makes money from charters.

The first finding of the 42-page union-funded Cost of Charter Schools report states that the revenue collected from charter schools does not cover the annual budget of the district’s Charter Schools Division.

But that’s not what the district’s own numbers reveal.

In January when the Charter Schools Division presented its budget, it showed that the district receives half a million dollars more than they need to pay for the division. That report, presented to the Budget, Facilities and Audit Committee by Charters Division Director Jose Cole-Gutierrez, showed that the 1 percent oversight fee collected from charter schools brings in $8.89 million while the annual expenses of the division’s 47 employees including their benefits total $8.37 million.

The UTLA report puts the indirect administrative costs of the division at $13.8 million, including the cost of the square footage of space used in the Beaudry headquarters by the staff, janitorial costs and time managing and investigating charters that could be spent on traditional schools. These costs, it states, are not supported by the 1 percent oversight fee collected from charters that is used to fund the district’s charter schools division.

The UTLA study notes the district doesn’t charge the charter schools the full 3 percent it says they could charge for the 56 schools that are located on district sites. That could result in an increase of $2 million for the district, it says. School board member Monica Ratliff pointed out at Tuesday’s board meeting that many of her constituents ask why the full amount is not collected from the charter schools.

The report was immediately criticized by district staff and others, as both inaccurate and an attempt to divert attention from far larger drains on the district’s finances. District officials have been directed to refrain from commenting officially, but they are planning to respond to the report as early as a special school board meeting planned for Tuesday to discuss the budget.

An initial analysis by the Associated Administrators of Los Angeles (AALA), the district’s bargaining unit for middle managers, also noted that the district’s own figures for its charters division contradicted those in the UTLA report. AALA reported that a district official said the number of charters contracting outside the district for special education — and the ensuing financial impact — was vastly misrepresented in the UTLA report. And it questioned whether UTLA was reading the regulations on charter fees correctly and whether the district could charge charters a full 3 percent.

“The report is full of glaring inaccuracies,” the California Charter Schools Association stated in a email. “It mischaracterizes how special education is funded, it ignores millions of dollars that charters pay to the district for facilities, and it guesstimates the staff time of hundreds of district employees, among many other distortions and false conclusions. We’re encouraged that the district will be scrutinizing the report to assess its accuracy. But what’s especially frustrating is that this report totally ignores the most important part of public education: student learning.”

It added, “When it comes to the district’s finances, the elephant in the room is the $13 billion in unfunded post-employment benefit liabilities that places LAUSD in the unenviable position of having to make very hard decisions in the months and years to come. It’s of course no surprise that UTLA’s report made no mention of that issue; they’d rather blame everyone else than offer real solutions for the district’s complex financial problems.”

The UTLA report comes as the district is facing a potential $450 million deficit within three years due to declining enrollment and increasing fixed costs, including pension costs, legal liability and other post-employment benefits.

The report was but together by a Florida-based consulting company, MGT of America, and Susan Zoller, a former teacher and administrator who compiled the report, presented it to the school board on Tuesday.

UTLA spokesperson Anna Bakalis said in a statement, “The data used in the MGT report came directly from the district. We stand behind the figures as given to MGT. We are glad this financial impact report has sparked a dialogue about these issues, and look forward to finding out more ways to address the findings that were laid out in this report.”

Unfunded pensions, which currently top $13 billion and have more than doubled since 2005, make LA Unified the only school district on a list of top 10 government entities across the country that can’t afford their pensions — the top spot going to the city of Detroit.

In January, a company that has performed independent audits of LA Unified for seven years told a school board committee that the district had gone into the red for the first time, with liabilities outstripping assets by $4.2 billion, in large part because of having to report $5.2 billion in retiree pension liabilities.

Another drain on the district is chronic absenteeism which results in an annual loss of $139 million in revenue. Increasing attendance in schools by only one percent — which would make it equal to the average in the state — that could bring in $45 million a year, according to district figures.

And a sweeping report of the Independent Financial Review Panel last fall found that while the district has lost 100,000 students over the past six years, it has actually increased full-time staff. The report, commissioned by former LA Unified Superintendent Ramon Cortines, added, “Given the significantly smaller population of students, these staffing levels need to be reexamined.”

UTLA itself is facing financial trouble. This year’s UTLA operating deficit was estimated at $1.5 million, fueled in large part by increased costs for staff retiree health benefits.

In a financial overview to members last May, the union treasurer, Arlene Inouye, wrote that the union has been operating at a deficit for seven of the last 10 years, partly due to a drop in membership of 10,000 members since 2007. In the last three years alone, she wrote, the union lost “more than $2.5 million.”

To address the losses, UTLA President Alex Caputo-Pearl this year called for and won a $19 per month dues increase.

“Of course UTLA is exaggerating the financial burden of charter schools,” said Jim Blew, director of StudentsFirst California, a nonprofit group working to ensure that every California child has great teachers and great schools. “This is all designed to distract from the real issues: the need for LAUSD to create schools that families would choose voluntarily and to get its finances in order. They simply can’t blame charters for their problems when they offer weak school options and have ballooning staff during shrinking enrollment and out-of-control pension and healthcare costs.”

The Independent Financial Review Panel last fall also stated that enrollment declines were all but inevitable and charters were not the issue.

“Even if LAUSD had no more new charter schools, its enrollment would continue to decline due to demographic factors, factors that are not within its control, and that are unlikely to reverse in the coming years. All district departments must properly plan for the continued and possibly accelerated decline of student enrollment, and the board must act accordingly.”

Parents, students and teachers rallied Wednesday at Castelar Street Elementary School in Chinatown.

About 200 parents, students and teachers rallied Wednesday morning outside Castelar Street Elementary School in Chinatown as part of a “walk-in” calling for lower class sizes at LA Unified, increased staffing and more accountability for Prop. 39, the law that gives charter schools the right to use empty class space at district schools through a process called “co-location.”

Several TV news crews were on hand for the demonstration, which saw parents, teachers and students march around the block hoisting banners and chanting before walking into the school. There were no speeches or news conference.

The choice of Castelar as a focus for media attention was no coincidence, as parent leaders at the school recently stopped a planned co-location of a charter school there.

“With the threat, the defunding of public education and then also the co-location effort, with Metro Charter School wanting to take over so-called extra space, this community was in an uproar, the parents were in an uproar. And it doesn’t make any sense to them,” Arlene Inouye, who is treasurer for UTLA, told LA School Report. “So they rallied together and have been front and center in protesting the ability of the charter schools to do that.”

The walk-in was part of a national effort organized by the Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools, with protests and rallies going on in cities around the country. UTLA took part in a similar national walk-in day on Feb. 17. The Alliance said rallies were planned in 80 cities Wednesday as part of the Reclaim Our Schools protest.

According to Inouye, there were rallies planned at 150 LA Unified schools Wednesday, although it is unclear how many schools were the site of rallies. Because a focus was on co-locations, more than 500 charter parents signed a letter addressed to UTLA President Alex Caputo-Pearl asking him to stop the event out of concern for protests happening in front of students. “We will be shouted at, maligned and disrespected, our children will ask us what they’ve done wrong, and their teachers will, as always, be expected to rise above it all,” the letter said.

Caputo-Pearl was not present at the Castelar event. A UTLA notice did not specifically say that rallies were planned at co-locations, and according to the California Charter Schools Association (CCSA), only one unidentified charter school was the site of a demonstration.

“So far, it looks like UTLA listened to the hundreds of charter families who urged them to let charter students learn in peace today,” said CCSA spokesman Jason Mandel in an email. “We’re aware of just one charter school where UTLA staged a demonstration. As charter families stepped off the sidewalk into the busy street to avoid the UTLA members shouting at them, a few charter students were heard asking their parents, ‘Why don’t they like us?’ If Alex Caputo-Pearl’s goal today was to make a few children feel demonized, he succeeded.”

LA Unified communications director Shannon Haber said the district did not have an official estimate as to how many schools were the site of rallies. It is common practice for the Los Angeles School Police Department to provide extra security at UTLA rallies, and in an email Haber said, “According to School Police, we did have more officers available if needed, but they were not needed.”

Although there were multiple stated reasons for the rally in the UTLA notice, co-location was on the mind of the parents LA School Report spoke to at Castelar. The school has 570 students and is at about 75 percent capacity, according to the district. In response to Metro’s plans to co-locate, parents at Castelar recently gathered more than 2,400 signatures in a petition and lobbied to keep those classrooms from being shared. Metro has since canceled its plans to move into the school.

Castelar has a reputation for high performance. LA School Report in September identified it as one of 16 schools with above average poverty for the district, an above average number of English learners and above average scores on the Smarter Balanced standardized tests. On the recent CORE accountability system, the school scored a 91 out of 100. The district average was 60.

“Earlier this year we successfully spoke out against co-location, and I think it’s great that we don’t have a charter school occupying classrooms that we use — arts, music, science, PE. I’m glad that our community resources aren’t being taken,” said Castelar parent Martin Wong. “But I recognize that it is gong to start all over again next year, because there are a lot of schools out there looking for free space. And I think it’s great, kids should come in and use it, but they should join our school. I don’t think it’s OK for another school to come in and take away space from a school that’s been successful for generations and decades helping inner-city kids score really well.”

Unlike many of the UTLA-led rallies over the last year, the Castelar rally featured far fewer teachers and far more more parents and students, and it was parents holding the bullhorns and leading the chants. One of those with a bullhorn was Jasmine Wang, whose child is in kindergarten at Castelar.

“According to Prop. 39 we have quote unquote empty classrooms, except we do use those classrooms, they just are not with full-time teachers,” Wang said.” And that really pushed a lot of us coming together — Spanish speakers, Cantonese-speaking parents and English-speaking parents — to say we don’t need another school in here, our school is great, come check out our programs.”

She added, “We are really hoping that our voices are heard, our students are heard, our parents and our community’s voices are heard that we need smaller class sizes and we need you all to prioritize your funding that exists to our kids.”

In her comments to LA School Report, Inouye referenced a larger battle her union is waging with the charter school movement as a nonprofit organization, Great Public Schools Now, finalizes plans to expand charter school access within the district. An early draft of the plan, which is backed by the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation and the Walton Family Foundation, stated a goal to enroll half of all of the district’s students in charter schools within eight years, though it has pulled back from that figure in recent months. UTLA leaders, looking to degrade the plan and erode public support for it, use their own terminology when discussing it.

“We have billionaires like the Broad-Walmart plan who have said they are going to take over our schools, take over half our district and turn them into unregulated charters. So this is a message to the charter schools, the California Charter Schools Association and everyone else that we want our public schools, and we will fight for them,” Inouye said.

In response to Inouye’s comments, CCSA provided the following statement from Gloria Rodriguez, a parent of a student at Aspire Pacific Academy.

“I’m one of more than 500 charter parents and supporters who signed a letter asking UTLA’s president, Alex Caputo-Pearl, not to disrupt charter school campuses today. I will continue to ask UTLA to stop spreading misinformation about charter schools and criticizing parents like me for seeking out the best possible education for my kids. It confuses me when they blame us and the choice we have made for our children rather than focusing their time and energy on making district schools better. Maybe if they did, parents would be lining up to get into the district schools just as they are lining up to get into my charter school,” Rodriguez said.

According to the report, “African-American and Latino charter students almost twice as likely (19 percent) to apply to [the University of California system] as their traditional public school peers (11 percent).”

The report also concluded that charter schools serving majorities of low-income students have a college acceptance rate of 21 percent, compared to a traditional school rate of 11 percent.

“This new report demonstrates that charters are excelling at providing the critical educational acumen and strong preparation support needed for all of our students to attend college,” CCSA CEO Jed Wallace said in a statement. “Moreover, it shows that the college-going culture and mission that guides many charter schools translates into results.”

The report also found that “charter schools are helping students achieve entry into higher levels of college education (16 percent) than they would have had they attended traditional public high schools (14 percent). More charter students who would have otherwise enrolled in CSUs are gaining entry into UCs. Similarly, more students who would have otherwise enrolled in community college are gaining entry into CSUs.”

The report also said, “Charter high schools are providing a greater proportion of their students with college access (37 percent) through higher A-G subject requirement completion rates than their traditional school peers (24 percent).”

According to CCSA, the report’s findings support three of its policy recommendations:

• Reinforce the need for access to A-G completion for all historically disadvantaged students as one of the starting points to ensure educational equity in college-going outcomes.
• Improve data collection and availability of post-secondary data to facilitate additional research into what is working for charter schools and how to replicate their students’ college and career readiness.
• Open more high-quality, autonomous charters as a promising way to give our students a step up into higher levels of post-secondary education which will influence the trajectory of their lives.

The CCSA report, called Step Up: How Charter Schools Provide Higher Levels of California Public University Access, will likely by cited by charter school supporters in Los Angeles as they look to drum up support for Great Public Schools Now, a nonprofit that wants to expand charter access in LA Unified. The plan has been denounced by some members of the school board and the LA teachers union, UTLA, as one that could bankrupt the district and union due to the potential enrollment loss.

• Video and read more: 13 things to know about charter schools

The report, which was released April 19, comes just in advance of National Charter Schools Week, which is a public campaign run by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. Last week the organization released the results of a poll finding that 78 percent of parents support a charter school opening in their neighborhood and an equal number of parents favor more public school choices, regardless of where they live.

“During National Charter Schools Week, we recognize the role public charter schools play in providing America’s daughters and sons with a chance to reach their fullest potential, and we recommit to strengthening our nation’s classrooms for all,” President Obama said in a statement.

LA School Report

Independent charters are not included in the California Office of Reform Education (CORE)’s statistics, because CORE’s system was developed as part of a waiver its districts received from the federal government relieving them of some of the mandates of the No Child Left Behind law.

Charters were not allowed to join in the waiver, according to Elizabeth Robitaille, senior vice president of Achievement and Performance Management and School Development and Support for the California Charter Schools Association. But CCSA has given a thumbs up to the CORE system and hopes the state adopts a similar one.

Read LA School Report’s analysis of CORE data for LAUSD schools.

While the state is developing a system that will incorporate some of the new data CORE now includes, such as graduation rates and English learner performance, it has not committed to a single numerical ranking system like CORE provides and may instead use more of a “dashboard” approach that would give a school several different scores. CCSA prefers CORE’s numerical ranking system, which gives schools a score of 1 to 100.

“If each authorizer is free to interpret a broad series of multiple measures through its own lens, they would have enough discretion to make decisions that aren’t strongly tied to data,” CCSA said in a statement. “This could lead to authorizers finding reasons to justify renewing chronically failing schools or closing high performing charter schools. To keep politics and personalities to a minimum, California needs accessible, consistent, transparent statewide academic standards that define how well we expect our schools to perform.”

When it comes to available measuring sticks for independent charter schools, looking up their performance on the 2015 Smarter Balanced tests is one way, as 60 percent of a CORE score is based on the same tests. The score can then be compared to the charter average, district average or state average. This data is based solely on test scores, as was the old state accountability system, the Academic Performance Index (API). API was discontinued after 2013 as the state prepared the new Common Core-aligned Smarter Balanced tests, which began last year.

Read more about CORE’s system: 6 things to know about LAUSD’s new school accountability system

For a broader look at more charter school data there is CCSA’s Portrait of the Movement annual report, which has been on hold since 2014 as CCSA retools the report to incorporate the new Common Core standards and to include college readiness, Robitaille said.

Once the state releases the 2016 Smarter Balanced scores, “(CCSA) will produce academic accountability report cards for all schools in the state using this information and will post them on our snapshots website. And then we’ll issue our Portrait of the Movement, aggregating and assessing this data, along with a sortable spreadsheet of data for the public,” Robitaille said.

In the meantime, Robitaille pointed to the Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) report on Los Angeles, “the most robust research report on LA that has been done recently,” she said.

“It demonstrates staggeringly positive results,” she said. “It shows charter schools in Los Angeles are generating learning equivalents to an extra four months in math and 2.5 months in English language arts. For low-income Latino students, for every two years that they are enrolled in a charter school, they are generating well over three years of learning in math and more than 2.5 years of learning in English language arts, compared to what is happening in district schools.”

Components of the LA Unified MiSiS computer system.

LA Unified and its 221 independent charter schools have reached an agreement on the court-ordered requirement that charters sync their student data information systems with the district’s massive MiSiS system.

The agreement calls on the district to develop an interface solution that will allow data systems at charter schools to communicate with MiSiS but allow the schools to keep their own systems in place. The agreement also allows charters to adopt MiSiS if they wish to do so.

The agreement was reached on March 10 between LA Unified, its independent charters, the plaintiffs of a special education consent decree and the court-ordered independent monitor of the decree.

The agreement was characterized as “a huge win” for all parties by Gina Plate of the California Charter Schools Association (CCSA), which negotiated on behalf of LA Unified’s charters.

“It could have gotten very hostile and ugly, like some of the other areas we have with charters and the district, but we were able to resolve this one in a way that makes everyone happy,” said Plate, who is a senior special education advisor for CCSA.

Plate said the district, the independent monitor and the plaintiffs reached an internal agreement in December to agree to the interface but did not share that with charter leaders until this month because they needed time to draft the letter and get all of the details organized.

LA Unified has been under federal court oversight since 1996 as a result of a class-action lawsuit that accused it of non-compliance with special education laws. As part of the settlement, an independent monitor was appointed in 2003 to oversee the district’s compliance with what is known as the Chanda Smith Modified Consent Decree.

MiSiS, the district’s student data system, was created to fulfill part of the decree which called for better tracking of special education student records. And because special education students at LA Unified’s independent charter schools are part of the same special education district, the decree required charters to also take on MiSiS.

But when MiSiS was launched in the fall of 2014 it immediately began to cause substantial problems at schools due to system failures and glitches. Charter schools were hesitant to adopt the system themselves due to the problems, Plate said, and also because many of the older charters already have their own systems that they have dedicated time and money to developing.

“Because there was no system available for the last 20 years, charters have purchased their own systems. And not only have they purchased their own systems, they have customized those systems to reflect the needs of their student population,” Plate said.

MiSiS has been largely stabilized and is operating without any major problems being reported this school year. CCSA officials have had weekly meetings for the last year and a half to try and resolve the issue of how to get charters in line with the court requirements, Plate said.

The agreement was announced to LA Unified school board members and Superintendent Michelle King in a March 10 letter from LA Unified’s Charter Schools Division Director Jose Cole-Gutierrez and CEO of Strategic Planning and Digital Innovation Diane Pappas.

“This approach will allow charter schools to retain their current student information systems, provided that they transmit certain key student data to the district in a technically compatible manner,” the letter said.

Plate said the interface will be developed by LA Unified along with experts from Microsoft, and the district will pay the bill. No timeframe has yet been set on when the interface will be ready.

The agreement between charters and the district on MiSiS does not complete the consent decree process for LA Unified. It still has to spend over $600 million to make all of its schools compliant with the Americans With Disabilities Act, and it has one more of 18 performance-based outcomes that it needs to meet. The outcome requires disabled students to receive services as specified in their Individual Education Plans. In November, district officials and the independent monitor told LA School Report the district likely would be under the watch of the monitor for several more years.

Lizbeth Cuevas of Alliance Gertz-Ressler High School

Three Los Angeles charter school students were among the winners of $2,000 scholarships awarded at the 23rd Annual California Charter Schools Conference this week.

The 10 recipients of the Susan Steelman Bragato Scholarship Award have “a passion for community service and for reaching their educational dreams,” the California Charters Schools Association (CCSA), which hosted the conference, said in a statement.

The Los Angeles winners are Lizbeth Cuevas of Alliance Gertz-Ressler High School, Anahi Gutierrez of Animo Venice Charter High School and Ricardo Lopez of Synergy Quantum Academy.

The conference took place Monday through Thursday at the Long Beach Convention Center and was attended by over 4,000 educators and charter school leaders from around the state.

CCSA provided the following information on the three students:

• Cuevas: Lizbeth describes herself as a Latina immigrant, whose father was a construction laborer and mother sold the family jewelry to help pay rent. Her parents were never able to help Lizbeth with academics, but they supported and encouraged her in life. Lizbeth consistently earns high academic grades and finds herself on the Dean’s List and Honor Roll. She is an active volunteer at her school and in the community, engaging in activities such as cleaning up downtown Los Angeles and creating gardens. She plans to earn a college degree to become a teacher and help other Latina immigrants like her find their voice.
•  Gutierrez: Anahi was born and raised in West Los Angeles as a first-generation Mexican-American in a home where Spanish is the predominant language. As the daughter of immigrant parents, she has witnessed their struggles, which shape her dreams and aspirations to attend college and become a nurse. Anahi takes six Advanced Placement courses, consistently places on the Honor Roll and participates in several clubs and committees. She is also a team player on the volleyball court and runs for the gold on the cross-country team. Anahi worked as a summer youth intern at the Kaiser Permanente West Los Angeles Hospital where she assisted nurses and delivered meals to patients at the Family Care Center.
• Lopez: Ricardo credits his father for always encouraging him to learn as much as possible in order to provide value to others in life. He plans to attend college and change the world through engineering and by inventing new technologies. Ricardo has participated in the MESA engineering program for three years and interned at Northrop Grumman in the electronic engineering department during the summer of 2015. He plans to return to the organization every summer until he graduates from college and becomes a full-time employee. Other than his engineering activities, Ricardo participates in Uncensored, a club that focuses on social issues and ways to give back to the community. He is also a member of the weightlifting club and part of the Los Angeles Police Department cadet program.

The other winners of the scholarship are Christopher Huebner of University Preparatory School in Redding, Jian Hao of Oakland Charter High School in Oakland, Lucerito Lopez of High Tech High North County in San Marcos, Melissa Murdock of Charter University Prep in Placerville, Katherine Najar Velazquez of Gompers Preparatory Academy in San Diego, Michael Regla of San Jacinto Valley Academy in Heme and Keelan Winter of Springs Charter School in Temecula.

The scholarship is named in honor of Susan Steelman Bragato, the co-founder of the first charter school in California and the founder of the California Network of Educational Charters (which was renamed the California Charter Schools Association in 2003). Steelman Bragato was one of the first people to recognize the importance of building a strong network of support among charter school leaders statewide. She also organized the first California Charter Schools Conference. She died in 2005 at the age of 47.

Malka Borrego

The California Charter Schools Association handed out nine Hart Vision Awards Tuesday at the 23rd Annual California Charter Schools Conference, and five of them were given to schools or leaders from the Los Angeles area.

Among the winners at the event, which is taking place Monday through Thursday at the Long Beach Convention Center, was The CHIME Institute for Charter Schools of the Year and Sarah Eun of Larchmont Charter School for Teacher of the Year. Equitas Academy Charter Schools Founder and CEO Malka Borrego and Ivy Bound Academy Founder and Director Kiumars Arzani both accepted awards honoring their schools as Schools of the Year.

In addition, Eli and Edythe Broad of the Broad Foundation were honored as Supporter of the Year.

“It’s really a wonderful honor and such a reflection of the hard work that our teachers and our students and our families put in on a day-to-day basis to make real our vision of a model for inclusive education,” CHIME Executive Director Erin Studer told LA School Report. “It’s an honor to get up there and accept the award but really I’m accepting it on behalf of amazing school community.”

Studer said he believed CCSA took notice of the school this year because of the focus it puts on the professional development of other charters and traditional schools. 

“One of the things that I think really caused CCSA to notice or highlight our effort is we put a tremendous amount of time to disseminating our practices and providing professional development for other schools in Southern California as well as New York, for both charter and district-run schools. We have worked with 50 different schools, both charter and district schools, in the last three years,” Studer said.

The conference was attended this year by around 4,000 people, which was up from 2,500 attendees last year, according to CCSA.

Watch the below video to learn more about Equitas Academy Charter Schools and CHIME. Click here to learn more about each winner and click here to go to CCSA’s YouTube page to see videos from the event.

As educators from around the state head to Long Beach next week for the 23rd annual California Charter Schools Conference, California is holding steady in its friendliness to charter schools, says a January report from the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools (NAPCS), a pro-charter advocacy group that releases an annual study of state-level policies.

The survey ranked 43 charter laws — the 42 states that allow charter schools plus the District of Columbia — in regards to how successfully they encourage charter expansion, autonomy and accountability. As has been the case in recent years, California ranked near the top of the list.

Five takeaways — and one important caveat — from the report on the state of California’s charter schools:

1. California has held steady, remaining slightly above average in its friendliness to charter schools.

NAPCS ranks California’s charter laws as 15th friendliest in the nation. This represents a slight decline from 2015 when the state was ranked 11th, but the report is quick to point out that the slide came from other states gaining ground, not because California’s laws have become less supportive of charters.

2. One in 12 students in California attend charter schools.

About 8 percent of California students now attend charter schools — above the national mark of 5.8 percent. As of the 2014-2015 school year, the state has nearly 1,200 charter schools operating today, by far the most in the country — though this statistic is mostly a reflection of California’s large population.

3. California has a cap on charter schools, but it’s not restricting growth.

NAPCS opposes state caps on the number of charter schools, and thus gives full points to states with no such limitations. California gets substantial credit, however, because although it does have a cap, charters still have “ample room to grow.” Specifically, California began with a charter cap of 250 in 1998, but by statute the ceiling increases by 100 schools each year. The current limit is 1,950 charter schools; there are just under 1,200 schools operating in California presently. The number of charters is California has more than quadrupled since 1999.

4. California gets extra points for allowing virtual charters — but that might not be a good thing.

NAPCS awards points to states that allow a “variety” of charter schools, including start-ups, conversions — in which a district school is turned over to a charter operator — and online schools, in which students receive some or all of their instruction via computer.

But according to a recent study, online charter schools do much worse than traditional public schools, and California’s virtual schools are no exception (the results were particularly bad for student achievement in reading). According to data from 2009-2010, about one in five California charters were virtual schools.

5. California does not require charter teachers to participate in collective bargaining agreements.

NAPCS credits states for not requiring that charter school teachers be unionized and participate in collective bargaining. In 2009-2010, only about 15% of California charter schools were unionized. Recent controversy has erupted as L.A.’s Alliance College-Ready Public Schools chain has aggressively fought efforts to unionize its teaching staff. Research has found that when some California charter schools unionized, student achievement was largely unaffected.

Caveat: These rankings don’t seem to say anything about student achievement.

One important thing to remember about the NAPCS rankings: Just because a state scores well (or poorly) doesn’t say much about the quality of the state’s charter sector, as measured by student achievement. There just doesn’t seem to be a correlation between the two.

For instance, Rhode Island received poor marks from NAPCS, but its charters perform extremely well relative to traditional public schools, according to one study. On the other hand, Indiana was ranked No. 1 as having the best laws in the nation, but charter schools there only slightly outperform district schools.

California charter schools, despite getting relatively strong ratings from NAPCS, perform slightly better in reading and slightly worse in math than traditional public schools.

Earlier research suggests that “permissibility” in charter law — how easy it is to get a charter started and authorized — is negatively related to student achievement. On the other hand, charter autonomy — the degree to which existing charters are free from certain regulations — is positively associated with achievement.

This article was published in partnership with The74Million.org. 

LA Unified school board President Steve Zimmer

*UPDATED

A number of charter school operators across LA Unified say the district and its school board are turning up the heat on them to an unbearable degree while using the Charter Schools Division and Office of Inspector General to make approval and renewals of charter schools increasingly difficult.

They claim there has been an increase in the number of investigations by the Inspector General’s office and more denials of charters by the board though increased scrutiny by the district’s Charter Schools Division.

The board has already denied more charter applications in the last six months than it had in the previous two years combined, and it is likely to issue at least three more denials at today’s board meeting. Three other applications were withdrawn last week by Magnolia Public Schools after the Charter Schools Division was set to recommend denial.

The board rarely goes against staff recommendations on charters and has only done so one time in the last year.

“It’s starting to feel like a witch hunt as opposed to effective oversight and accountability,” said Magnolia Public Schools CEO and Superintendent Caprice Young, who served as LAUSD board president from 2001-2003. “I definitely believe some of the board members confuse increased bureaucracy with effective oversight.”

Previous to Young taking over Magnolia a little over a year ago, LA Unified attempted to shut down two of its campuses over fiscal mismanagement. But then a state audit issued in May said the district acted too hastily in trying to shut the schools down.

Young said Magnolia has been the focus of a series of investigations by the Inspector General’s office and it is beginning to feel like a never-ending investigation. Just as she thought the investigations of Magnolia were over and relations with the district were returning to normal, she discovered Magnolia was the subject of a new investigation when the Inspector General’s office asked for financial records dating back to 2002, something it had already fully investigated in the past.

“The Inspector General should not be allowed to investigate charters indefinitely,” Young said. “These investigations put an unnecessary cloud over charters, which I believe is intentional. The investigations are taking place in search of problems instead of in response to evidence of problems.”

Young said the investigation was launched in August days after a Broad Foundation plan to finance a major expansion of charter schools in the district was leaked.

A nonprofit to execute the plan, Great Public Schools Now (GPS Now), was formed later and has since said the plan is being retooled to finance charters, magnets and other district schools. Still, the plan has been denounced by the school board in a December resolution because of the perceived threat it sees to the district’s enrollment and finances. Several board members have delivered scathing public comments attacking the plan, with board President Steve Zimmer saying the backers of the plan want to “bring down” the district.

In an open letter to LAUSD that was sent to LA School Report by the California Charter Schools Association (CCSA), 23 charter operators said they see a connection between the opposition to the plan and the increased scrutiny of charter schools.

The Inspector General’s office looks at improper and illegal activities taking place within the district and tries to detect fraud, waste or abuse. The office — which reports directly to the board — can be requested by any board member to open an investigation and has the power to issue subpoenas.

Much of the Inspector General office’s work is done in secret without public discussion, and confirming the claims by charter operators that the office has increased investigations is difficult. While any financial audits of charters are publicly released and published on the district’s website, investigations are not generally publicly released, and the office will not confirm or discuss any ongoing investigation.

There is some evidence that the office may have increased its number of investigations. The Inspector General, Ken Bramlett, went before the board’s Budget, Facilities and Audit Committee last month and requested an additional $570,000 for audits and investigations.

He said, “Charter-related work consumes the most amount of investigative resources due to the time-sensitive nature of the work and the monthly deadlines for board action on charter petitions.” He added, “What really worries me is the more charter schools that we authorize or the more charter schools that are planned, that’s that much more we are going to be asked to do with no additional resources.”

This year alone, there are five ongoing large-scale charter school investigations, Bramlett told the LA School Report in an email, although it is unknown if that is an increase from years past. When asked if there is any public record of who asked for an investigation, or if the number of investigations has increased, he said that information was confidential per the state education code.

The Charter Schools Division, which reports to the superintendent and issues recommendations to the board on the approval or denial of charter applications and renewals, can also request that the Inspector General open an investigation. Members of the public and other LAUSD divisions can also request an investigation through a hotline.

Cole-Gutierrez, who has been leading the division for eight years, insisted his office has not increased its scrutiny of charters or felt pressure to issue more recommendations for denials.

“Are we receiving indirect or direct pressure to deny charter schools? No,” Cole-Gutierrez said. “Our role is to be faithful to the process on the merits and give our best recommendation regardless of whatever else there may be in terms of perceptions, politics, etc., and I am proud of our team and our record to do so.”

When asked if his office had requested more investigations be launched by the Inspector General’s office, he said, “There are very few open investigations at the moment. I just think the facts don’t support that there are an increasing number.”

Young and other charter leaders said they see it differently and tell stories of being drowned in red tape. Several charter executives said they see a connection between the opposition to the GPS Now plan and increased scrutiny of charters that have been operating for years.

Parker Hudnut, a former LA Unified administrator who is now chief executive of ICEF Public Schools, a group of eight charters in LA Unified and two more in Inglewood Unified School District, put it this way:

“There’s absolutely a chilling effect going on, but I’m not smart enough to know what’s causing it. There has been a recent escalation, and the Broad plan may have a lot to do with that. But there’s what I call a dehumanization in the relationship between charters and LA Unified. It’s become a compliance culture; that’s the only thing we communicate about. There’s no space to talk about what we’re supposed to be talking about, and that’s helping kids.”

Cristina de Jesus, president and chief executive officer of Green Dot Public Schools California, which operates over a dozen schools in LAUSD, also said the scrutiny has increased. Green Dot has had eight charter renewals successfully go before the school board in the last year and had a new charter application approved in January. But de Jesus said it was no easy task.

“One of the frustrations I know that we have experienced and other folks have shared — and it could be the nature of the beast — but the target also seems to change,” she said. “What might be looked at one year might not be looked at the next year but something else is going to be, so it feels like you can’t get your bearings because the target is always changing.”

Young said the way charters are treated and analyzed is uneven compared to the scrutiny district schools receive.

“Back when I was on the board, we were approving charters with 50 pages of details and today the vast majority of those schools are thriving and are doing some cutting-edge work,” Young said. “Now, [charter applications] are 500 pages and most of that is boilerplate required by the school district, which makes the application process stifling. For the district to review a pilot school and approve it, they limit the submission to only 30 pages. With charters, the boilerplate alone is 10 times that.”

None of the seven school board members responded to a request by LA School Report to be interviewed for this story. Board member Ref Rodriguez, who took his seat on the board in July, sent a statement: “I have publicly advocated for more clear and transparent guidelines for how the superintendent makes a recommendation to the board regarding new petitions and renewals of charter schools.”

He added, “At the past six board meetings, I have had some outstanding questions regarding the grounds on which the district has based some of its recommendations. I acknowledge that quality oversight is complex and can be difficult; however, it is LAUSD’s duty, as the largest authorizer in the state, to ensure that all schools receive a fair, transparent, consistent and rigorous accountability process.”

Jed Wallace, the executive director of CCSA, said he also sees a pattern of anti-charter behavior by the board.

“Bottom line, this is a total witch hunt and charters are being harassed,” said Wallace, a former teacher in South-Central LA and administrator in San Diego before becoming chief operating officer of High Tech High, which grew from one school serving 400 students into eight schools serving more than 3,000 students during his tenure.

“This is not good authorizing and no other district in the state uses an [Inspector General]-like approach, an entity which was originally established to monitor LAUSD’s own bond efforts. LA’s charter sector is the best performing in the country and growing to meet the needs of students and their families. LAUSD has to do its part and improve its oversight to match that excellence.”

*Updated to reflect the letter was authored by 23 charter operators, not CCSA, and to include responses from Bramlett

Steve Zimmer on a video asking for superintendent search help.

Sure, they can go to any of the community meetings. Sure, they can fill out a survey online. But, ultimately, outside groups say they want a seat at the table when deciding the next LA Unified school superintendent.

At a special session after a closed session on Tuesday, the school board voted against a proposal to create a separate community panel of seven people, each school board member appointing one. The proposal by Mónica García, who was lobbied heavily by many of the groups, was voted down 5-2.

The board faced a more open proposal by board member Mónica Ratliff that would have allowed the entire community to meet the finalists of the superintendent search. That was voted down by a 4-3 vote.

CLASS (Communities for Los Angeles Student Success) sent a letter that originally asked for wider community participation in the search. Some of the groups had to request to be included to give their input into the search.

Sara Mooney, of United Way LA, said, “The school board made a non-welcoming vote for community involvement. They are against sharing responsibilities for the community to be involved in the choice of the next superintendent. We are disappointed.”

Like some of the other community organizations, Mooney said the United Way had to ask to have a meeting with search firms and was not among the groups picked by the school board members to be involved in the process. Mooney said she has spoken to parents who feel as if they have no say in the process “and feel like they already have a list and what their input is makes no difference.”

A few coalitions of educational groups have appealed to keep the search confidential but include a committee of community groups to help screen the finalists. Several board members said they feared that such a process would diminish responsibilities that the board was elected to carry out.

But what exactly do these scores tell us? It turns out that much depends on which scores one chooses to focus on, what time frame one looks at, and whether one looks at growth in scores rather than at scores at fixed points in time.

For now, the community outreach appears lacking, say some of the groups.

“I have been disappointed in the student turnout for some of these sessions,” said Melanie Kimes, the youth organizer of the Community Coalition. “I was in a group where only 15 students showed up.”

Also speaking before the board after their decision on Tuesday was Konstantin Hatcher, the managing director of outreach for Educators for Excellence, a teacher organization. He said that community groups can reach populations that the search firm may miss.

“There is a middle ground, you can still have confidentiality,” Hatcher told the board. “We hope that you hear us.”

Board member Ref Rodriguez, who is the only member of the seven who voted in favor of García’s proposal, expressed concern that some of the meetings were not well attended. He and board president Steve Zimmer made videos asking that people get involved in the survey and meetings. Some of the other board members voiced robo-calls that went to families in their district.

Zimmer, who has closely controlled the search outreach, extended the availability of the surveys and input to four more days, through Nov. 1. He thought the Halloween celebrations that bring families to the school campuses would help draw more people to participate.

“We want to give busy parents and guardians every opportunity to weigh in with their thoughts on the superintendent search,” Zimmer said. “It’s vital to the integrity of the process that their voice is heard and that we as board members need to hear what they say.”

He said that every school has paper forms in five languages, and the surveys can be taken online until the 11:59 p.m. Sunday deadline.

Anyone can take the survey, either online or on paper. The last public meetings were held yesterday

Ramon Cortines

LA Unified Superintendent Ramon Cortines is praising the high performance of the district’s magnet schools on on the recent Smarter Balanced standardized tests, which based on a district analysis shows 65 percent of them scoring higher than the state average in English language arts and 56 percent of them scoring higher than average in math.

LA Unified currently has 198 magnet schools, which are specialized schools with a particular academic focus, ranging from the arts to math to science. The magnets are open to all students living within the district, although some do fill up and have waiting lists. Enrollment is also based on a point system that includes consideration of race, as the magnets were originally created in the 1970s to help integration efforts. Forty of them are Gifted/High-Ability and Highly Gifted programs, which require students to meet some eligibility criteria. Independent charter schools are not allowed by law to require students to meet any academic criteria for enrollment.

Cortines’ statement touting the magnets vs. independent charters is perhaps meant to counter some of the breakdowns of test scores that were done by the California Charter Schools Association (CCSA), which showed LA Unified’s independent charters beating LA Unified’s traditional schools by a few percentage points in the sores, and by significantly more when the district’s affiliated charters were removed from the equation. Affiliated charters have a higher percentage of white and non-economically challenged students, and when removed the demographics of LAUSD and independent charters match up closely.

The CCSA did not comment on the district analysis of charters vs. magnets.

Charter operators and the district have long been in a propaganda war over which provides a better education, but the stakes have been raised significantly higher over the last month in the wake of the news that a group of deep-pocketed charter advocates are drawing up a plan to add 260 new independent charters to the district. Battle lines are being drawn, with board President Steve Zimmer saying recently that the plan is really an effort to “bring down” the district.

Although magnets and charters do not match up demographically, the solid performance of the magnets is a feather in the cap of LA Unified, which overall scored poorly on the tests, with roughly two-thirds of students falling below basic standards in English and three-fourths falling below standards in math.

Cortines also pointed out some “pockets of excellence” in the district at some traditional schools that scored well even with high levels of economically challenged students.

Eli Broad

Steve Zimmer, president of the LA Unified school board, said today that plans by Eli Broad and other philanthropists to expand the number of charter schools in the district represents “a strategy to bring down LAUSD that leaves 250,000 kids vulnerable to damage.”

A draft report of the plan appears show how the organizations involved would be creating the equivalent of a parallel school district, one with a defined goal of serving half the number of students attending LA Unified schools within eight years.

The “Great Public Schools Now Initiative” says the expansion would cost nearly half a billion dollars by 2023, through 260 new charter schools to serve an additional 130,000 students “most in need — low-income students of color.” Currently, about 151,000 students now attend charters in LA Unified, which has more charter schools, 264, than any school district in the country.

The 54-page report, dated “June 2015,” omits the names of authors or sponsoring organizations. But Eli Broad’s name appears at the end of a cover letter accompanying the report that makes a case for charter schools as “the greatest hope for students in L.A.” And alluding to the number of students on waiting lists to get into existing charters, now about 42,000, the need for more charters, he says, is urgent.

“We are committed to closing the waitlist and ensuring that every family in L.A. has access to a high-quality public school,” Broad writes. “Such dramatic charter school growth would address the needs of families who have been underserved by public schools for years, if not generations.”

He also argues that, “The stakes are extraordinarily high. In all our years working to improve public schools, we have never been so optimistic about a strategy that we believe has the potential to dramatically change not only the lives of thousands of students but also the paradigm of public education in this country.”

But Zimmer characterized the plan as a destructive one that would ignore the needs of thousands of other children “living in isolation, segregation and extreme poverty.”

“This is not an all-kids plan or an all-kids strategy,” he told LA School Report. “It’s very explicitly a some-kids strategy, a strategy that some kids will have a better education at a publicly-funded school that assumes that other kids will be injured by that opportunity. It’s not appropriate in terms of what the conversation should be in Los Angeles. The conversation should be better public education options and quality public schools for all kids, not some kids.”

He added, “To submit a business plan that focuses on market share is tantamount to commodifying our children.”

A spokeswoman for the Broad Foundation did not respond to numerous messages, seeking comment.

The draft report, a copy of which was given to LA School Report, represents the most comprehensive accounting so far of what the organizers intend to do, provided they can raise the considerable funds necessary. Broad says in his letter that $490 million “in new philanthropy” is necessary.

A full list of who is involved in the effort remains a mystery. So far, officials have acknowledged only the involvement of the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, along with the W.M. Keck and Walton Family Foundations — all leading players in educational reform efforts around the country. People familiar with the plans say the effort also involves more than a dozen other groups as well as wealthy individuals, some of them from Los Angeles.

The report says the Broad and Walton foundations are the initial funders for the effort.

The rationale for the expansion effort is based on the report’s assertions that charters do a better job of educating children than traditional public schools. Citing data from the California Charter Schools Association, the authors argue that charter students generally score better on statewide tests and have higher graduation rates even though it has widely been demonstrated that not all charter schools out-perform all traditional schools.

In building its case, the report is highly critical of LA Unified, the second-largest school district in the country, and its ability to provide quality education to young people in the city.

“Los Angeles has struggled mightily to educate its K-12 students, mirroring the challenges faced by many American cities,” the authors write, adding, “The achievement of students attending LAUSD schools is poor.”

It goes on to say that the Great Public Schools Now Initiative would serve as a model for other large urban districts so that “governors, mayors and other leaders across the country can point to Los Angeles as a city where a coordinate set of important investments significantly improved opportunities for students, families and the city.”

Even before details of the initiative were made known, powerful forces within LA Unified are already mounting efforts against the expansion. Among the opposition leaders is the LA teachers union, UTLA, which has fought long and hard against charters for years, arguing that they siphon off public money from traditional schools, attract a high percentage of higher-performing students and operate without the same scrutiny required of public schools.

UTLA, like its sister unions across the country, also oppose charters because their teachers are generally not union members.

Just two days ago, as the new Broad Museum opened downtown, UTLA teachers staged a protest rally against the charter expansion plans at the museum, aiming much of their invective at Broad.

Zimmer acknowledged that the foundations’ plans have opened a new front in public education wars that have roiled LA Unified and other large districts for years. This one, he said, would bring before the board a sharp focus on issues of choice and equality.

“The board,” he said, “has many strategies, tools and existing structures to raise questions about how quickly this could happen,” he said, without identifying them.

Besides the union and possible board opposition, the expansion effort faces several other major challenges, as well, which the report describes in detail.

First among them is finding suitable facilities for the new schools. Many charters have struggled to find adequate space, leading to neighborhood fights with public schools who share space with charters under the state’s co-location regulations. The report notes that in Los Angeles “available and useable real estate is scarce and expensive.”

Next, the authors acknowledge that the sources of “effective teachers and school leaders” are insufficient to meet the need of the expansion plans at a time the number of California teacher preparation programs is declining and a prime source of the charters for new teachers  — Teach for America — is producing fewer candidates.

The report also says the search for quality teachers will be hampered by UTLA’s new labor contract with the district that provides teachers a 10 percent salary increase over the next few years.

As a third factor, the report says the effort can only succeed through an strategy of finding quality charter operators, pointing out that the state charter association has taken steps in recent years to reduce the number of “under-performing” charters  and “growth for growth’s sake” is not the aim.

A final challenge is raising money. The report says the initial support for the plan from the Broad and Walton foundations “should help to catalyze support from other philanthropic sources.” It mentions no other groups who have made contributions.

The report lists 21 foundations and 35 wealthy individuals as potential investors — all of them worth at least $1.2 billion and many of the individuals familiar names, including Elon Musk, David Geffen, Sumner Redstone, Ed Roski and Steven Spielberg.

Source: CCSA

Students from LA Unified’s independent charter schools outperformed their counterparts at traditional schools on the recent Smarter Balanced standardized tests in the number meeting and exceeding standards, according to a new analysis by the California Charter Schools Association (CCSA).

The charter group found that the charter students scored nine percentage points higher in English language arts but only four percentage points higher in math.

The new analysis differs from a previous one by CCSA, in that it removes LA Unified’s 53 affiliated charters from the comparison, as the state does. Affiliated charters are district schools that operate with most of the same rules as regulations that govern traditional schools but with greater autonomy over spending decisions. Their teachers are union members.

The district’s 211 independent charters are publicly-funded schools run by outside groups who have even more autonomy, and in most cases, their teachers are not union members.

Students from affiliated charters accounted for only 22,750 of the district’s 267,228 students — about 8.5 percent — who took the tests, but they tend to skew the comparison because their racial and economic demographics do not match up with the district averages. They tend to have about half as many children from families living in poverty, with dozens of the schools located in more affluent neighborhoods of the San Fernando Valley.

Including their scores with those from traditional district schools reduces the difference between independent charters to only a few percentage points.

By removing them from consideration, the demographics of traditional schools and independent charters match up more closely. According to the CCSA analysis, LA Unified’s affiliated charters have 47 percent white students, 30 percent Latino and 7 percent black, compared with 7, 74 and 13 for independent charters and 7, 77 and 9 for traditional schools.

“The main point is that autonomous charters, with nearly identical demographics, outperform traditional schools on both subjects,” the CCSA said in an email.

The demographic differences are also noteworthy due to a very large achievement gap that black and Latino students showed on the tests compared with their white counterparts. Also affiliated charters tend to have fewer English-language learners, 7 percent, compared with 22 percent for traditional schools and 19 percent for independents. English learners also showed a significant achievement gap.

The CCSA also pointed out that affiliated charters have 35 percent economically disadvantaged students, while traditional schools have 83 percent and independent charters have 82 percent.

Cynthia Lim, LA Unified’s executive director of Office of Data and Accountability, declined to comment on the charter group’s numbers, saying, “Our analysis is currently under review by the Superintendent.”

The relevance of these scores as they relates to charter schools is sure to be a hot topic for discussion in the coming months, considering the announcement recently from group of powerful foundations that are planning a major expansion of independent charters in LA Unified.

The teachers union, UTLA, is leading a fight against the expansion even though the foundations have resisted providing any information about their intensions.

• * UPDATED

This one is sure to spark some discussion around LA Unified water coolers tomorrow: Independent charter schools in the district scored almost even with traditional and affiliated charters on the new California Assessment of Student Progress and Performance (CAASPP) tests.

The results of the new Common Core-aligned tests, which were released today, show that traditional/affiliated charter schools and independent charter schools are within two and half percentage points in overall performance in both math and English language arts, according to the California Charter Schools Association (CCSA).

The CCSA crunched the numbers on independent charter schools in the district and the state, as the information released by the California Department of Education provided overall scores for school districts but only individual scores for independent charter schools.

The CCSA released a press release touting the results, saying that LAUSD’s independent charter schools are “performing 26 points better on English Language Arts and 25 points higher on Math.” However, considering the scoring scale is between 2,000 and 3,000, the difference is roughly 2.5 percent. Both are still below the state average, with LAUSD schools 28 points below overall and its independent charters three points below.

Statewide, charters scored 4.9 points better than non-charters in English language arts and 2.4 points better in math, according to a press release by CCSA. This equaled a three percent difference in English and within the same percentage point on math.

As the debate about the value of charters is heating up to new levels since the news that billionaire school reform leader Eli Broad and several other powerful players are planning a massive expansion of charter schools in LA Unified, these numbers are likely to be spun in both directions by the opposing sides of the charter debate.

*Updated to show the difference is 2.5 percent, not .025

The number is a record high.

“Evidence over the past five years argues that the public has never been more supportive of charter public schools than they are right now based on increasingly high parent demand, growth in charter school enrollment, and statewide polling data,” Jed Wallace, president and CEO of CCSA, said in a statement. “This growth in support has occurred during a period when charter public schools have strengthened their performance, especially with historically underserved students.”

Charter schools are public schools that are operated by private entities or non-profits. They have become a great cause of controversy in California as their critics view them as an attack on public education and teacher unions for siphoning dollars away from traditional public schools.

Alex Caputo-Pearl, president of the LA teachers union, UTLA, summed up the views of many charter critics when he told the Los Angeles Times, “The ascendant forces in California’s charter movement, I don’t see a lot of value in them.”

But despite the critics, parents and students are seeking out charters in greater numbers, according to the CCSA, as last year’s waiting list estimate was just over 91,000. And as the waiting list grows, so has actual enrollment. California has more charter schools than anywhere in the country, and LA Unified has more than any other district. In LA Unified, the number of students in charter schools grew to over 139,000 in the 2013-14 school year from 35,000 ten years ago .

“As independent public schools, charter schools have the ability to try innovative approaches to teaching and learning in the classroom,” Elizabeth Robitaille, a senior vice president with CCSA, said in a statement. “And as more families learn that charter public school students are gaining extra weeks and months of learning in math and reading compared to their peers who attend traditional district schools, more families are choosing the charter school option.”