Great Public Schools Now Executive Director Myrna Castrejon at a June news conference announcing the first three grants.

Great Public Schools Now announced Thursday it will give up to $3.75 million in grant funds next year to expand up to five academically successful LA Unified school campuses in underserved areas — the nonprofit’s first partnership with the school district.

GPSN launched its program in June, when it gave its first grants, totaling $4.5 million, to Teach for America, an after-school program called Heart of LA and Equitas Academy, which runs three charter schools in LA’s Pico-Union neighborhood.

GPSN Executive Director Myrna Castrejon said replicating high-performing schools has not been attempted in Los Angeles before or anywhere in the nation at the same scale, and the organization is encouraging the “best and brightest” in the district to apply for grants to expand their successful schools’ impact on more children in LA.

“We are excited to begin this collaboration with LA Unified schools where we know high-needs students are finding supportive learning environments that result in high achievement,” Castrejon said. “Our goal is to increase the number of students enrolled in high-quality programs, and to do so quickly.”

 GPSN is encouraging schools that fit certain criteria to apply for the grants. Castrejon said her organization wants to help successful leaders do more, rather than tinker with what’s working.

“We feel strongly that it is actually the leaders and the school that have the will and vision to do more that should apply rather than us deciding to do x, y or z,” she said.

“Frankly, I’m really excited to see who will apply,” she said.

Castrejon said her organization has been working with Superintendent Michelle King and her staff to develop the process, which she described as collaborative and open.

“I am excited about the opportunities to increase the number of high-quality choices for our LA Unified families,” King said in a statement. “We have schools in every corner of the district where students are excelling. Investing in these campuses will allow more of our students to attain the knowledge and skills to be successful in college, careers and in life.”

The grants — that will range from $50,000 to $250,000 annually over three years — will only be given to district-run schools. They must be used to expand successful schools by either adding seats or adding a new campus of a school.

Here are some of the criteria:

• schools must be non-selective, high-performing magnets, pilot or traditional schools;
• at least half of the students must meet or exceed proficiency in math or English on state tests
• no fewer than 25 percent of all students must perform at proficient levels
• schools as a whole must perform significantly better in math and English than surrounding schools with similar demographics
• schools must enroll special education students and English language learners at rates similar to the district as a whole
• administrators should have the autonomy to pick their own teaching staffs
• at least 80 percent of the students qualify for a free or reduced-price lunch

GPSN will also provide up to five planning grants of $20,000 to help schools prepare their applications. The deadline to apply for a planning grant is Oct. 28.

Applications for the grants will be due in February. An advisory committee will vet the applications, and the GPSN board of directors will make a final decision by April.

Castrejon said the grants are not intended to replace traditional funding of schools through ADA but will be used to support school leaders to do effective planning.

King said she has asked local district superintendents to identify the district’s most successful models and to develop competitive proposals.

“These grants can help us bring additional resources to meet our students’ needs,” said Christopher Downing, who oversees 148 schools as superintendent of Local District South. “They deserve every learning opportunity that will create pathways to college and 21st-century careers.”

Map of 10 neighborhoods where Great Public Schools Now will focus its efforts.

GPSN’s areas of focus are in South LA, East LA and the northeast San Fernando Valley because they have “chronically underperforming schools and few high-quality school choices for struggling families,” according to the organization’s plan released in June. In the 10 identified neighborhoods, 160,000 low-income English language learners are enrolled in schools where 80 percent of students are learning below their grade level, according to the plan.

GPSN’s new plan outlines its targeted areas of funding as teacher and leadership pipeline and support, facilities, community engagement and school replication.

GPSN is also holding a town hall meeting Oct. 22 at St. Mark’s Banquet Hall, 14646 Sherman Way, Van Nuys, 91405 from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. to hear feedback from parents and the community on its program. Another event will be held on Dec. 10 in LA, the location will be announced.

A student zone at the Los Angeles Public Library. (courtesy)

The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation announced Tuesday that it has donated $1 million to the city’s public libraries to fund technology purchases for the libraries’ after-school homework centers used by thousands of the city’s children and teens.

The free after-school homework centers are located at 34 library branches throughout the city. The centers give students internet access and students can get help from library staff with homework, college applications and scholarship essays.

The centers have laptops, computers, tablets and printers available for students to use.

The Broad Foundation has donated $589.5 million to educational initiatives since 1999, including $144 million for public charter schools and $123 million to support public school district improvements, according to its website. A plan by the Broad Foundation leaked last year proposed expanding the number of charter schools in Los Angeles to half of all public schools. In June a new initiative, Great Public Schools Now, announced it will expand access for 160,000 students in failing schools in 10 low-income Los Angeles neighborhoods to successful schools it will help replicate or expand.

The endowment for the libraries was named in honor of Edythe Broad, Broad Foundation co-founder and wife of Eli Broad.

“When I was a child growing up in Detroit, my sister and I always went to the library, and I have such fond memories of how I could be transported through books,” Edythe Broad said in a statement. “For so many students who don’t have a place to study after school, libraries can provide a place to go. And today, libraries have so much more than books. Everything a student needs to do their homework is available at the library.”

The homework centers are often used by youth who are homeless, from low-income backgrounds and in foster care.

“We are asking our students to do so much more these days — to think critically, to solve complicated problems, despite all the distractions and challenges happening in their lives,” April Bain, an LA Unified high school math teacher, said in a statement. “You can’t think critically and solve complicated problems if you can’t hear yourself think or get internet access to complete an assignment. I love that this is providing an essential need for students — a safe, quiet space to learn.”

LA Unified re-opened all of its schools libraries when school started this month, though with under-stocked library collections filled with outdated materials.

“Many of my students don’t have computers or Internet access at home, so I encourage them to go to the public library after school to do their homework,” Phina Ihesiaba, a sixth-grade social studies teacher at KIPP Academy of Opportunity, said in a statement. “It’s great to have a safe space with the free tools and help they need.”

The latest grant follows a gift of $250,000 last year to the Library Foundation to increase the number of “student zones” in the city’s library system.

More than 100,000 children and teens use the Los Angeles Public Library.

“We are thrilled that the Broad Foundation is investing in young Angelenos through the Los Angeles Public Library,” said city librarian John F. Szabo. “Students across the city rely on their neighborhood branch libraries as an extension of their academics, taking advantage of services such as our online tutoring and coding workshops, and this gift will allow us to further our efforts to help every student succeed.”

A list of the library branches where the homework centers are located can be found here.

IDEA Public Schools accepts the Broad Prize in Nashville. (Photo courtesy of National Alliance for Public Charter Schools)

IDEA Public Schools was awarded the $250,000 Broad Prize Monday for its efforts to inject hope and opportunity into the educational lives of some 24,000 mostly Hispanic and low-income Texas students in San Antonio, Austin and the Rio Grande Valley.

Accepting the award, co-founder and CEO Tom Torkelson gave an impassioned speech in defense of the tens of thousands of undocumented children IDEA educates — in schools close enough to see the border wall dividing the U.S. and Mexico — and sends to college. These kids pledge allegiance to the flag every morning, Torkelson said, his voice rising, they light fireworks on the Fourth of July and, in some cases, fight for their country “and all they want is the recognition and the respect of their fellow citizens.”

“Nobody gets to choose where they are born, but they made a choice to come to school,” he said. “How much more American do you want us to be?”

• Read more: IDEA plans to expand beyond Texas

Torkelson continued a recent Broad Prize tradition by announcing  that IDEA would split the $250,000 award —  given to the charter network that has done the most to boost student outcomes, close the achievement gap and increase graduation rates — with its fellow finalists, Houston-based YES Prep and New York City’s Success Academy. All three, he said, will put the money toward making sure undocumented students “have someone fighting for them.”

The spirit of combat was in the air of the grand ballroom at Nashville’s Music City Center where the prize was announced at the opening session of the National Charter Schools Conference.

Some 4,000 teachers, school leaders, policymakers, funders and education advocates flocked to the annual gathering, which this year had the added significance of marking the 25th anniversary of the nation’s first charter school law. (The 74 spotlights the must-see sessions of the 2016 conference.)

Nina Rees, CEO of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, used the occasion to issue a call for charter schools to enroll some 4 million students in the next five years — a million more than currently have seats. Rees said too many children linger on charter school wait lists by the thousands or their families simply don’t have a high-quality charter school within their geographic reach.

Meanwhile, Rees said charter school supporters are being outmaneuvered on many fronts, from social media — where Rees said for every positive charter school mention, there are three negative — to politics. She said their response was too often “scattered thought and research.”

“We are still busy in this movement making the academic case for charter schools when our opposition is out to destroy us,” she said. “We cannot let our future growth depend on people who oppose us. We need to play better offense.”

Rees also warned that while the federal government — under presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama — has traditionally been “one of our best friends,” that was about to change and advocates needed to shift their lobbying efforts.

“We will have a new president in the White House, and the Democratic candidate has not been as encouraging or as vocal about her support of charters as her husband was, and the Republican candidate is, shall we say, a little difficult to define,” Rees said, drawing laughs with her Donald Trump reference. “That makes the Senate and House races all the more important.”

Twice those in the packed ballroom were asked to take out their phones and text 52886 to signal both their support for charter schools and their numbers. The texts will be directed to Trump and Hillary Clinton.

By far the person who got the crowd most engaged was scholar, civil rights activist and charter pioneer Howard Fuller, whose emphatic speech touched on everything from scripture to the traumas of childhood poverty to a recently revived rift in the charter school movement between its more liberal and conservative forces.

Fuller said at age 25, the movement should celebrate the many wonderful schools it has created while acknowledging the terrible ones too, that it should thank the countless heroes fighting for children while calling out the “scoundrels and crooks who have used charter schools for their own personal gain and in the process have done harm to our children.”

He said he would not stop talking about the need for better medical and mental health care for poor children because it affects their ability to learn, and that the idea of charter schools must live in a room big enough to accommodate Black Lives Matter warriors, personal responsibility stalwarts, social justice advocates and free market champions. Sometimes that room is going to get hot.

“This is America and sometimes we got to fight. No, we can’t all get along,” Fuller said. “But the needs of our children dictate that we stay in the room and find common ground on what we agree on — the value of charter schools.”

Disclosure: The Walton Family Foundation is a partial funder of the National Charter Schools Conference, The 74 and LA School Report. Campbell Brown, The 74’s editor-in-chief, sits on the board of Success Academy.

This article was published in partnership with The 74.

A massive undertaking to increase access to high-quality education for tens of thousands of low-income students in Los Angeles was revealed today in a long-awaited plan by Great Public Schools Now, a well-funded nonprofit organization formed last year.

The goal is to expand access for 160,000 students GPSN has identified as attending failing schools in 10 low-income Los Angeles neighborhoods to successful schools it wants to help replicate or expand.

The neighborhoods are in South LA, East LA and the northeast San Fernando Valley, chosen because they have “chronically underperforming schools and few high-quality school choices for struggling families,” the plan states.

GPSN says it will provide funding and support to high-performing schools no matter what type of school — charter, traditional, pilot, magnet or partnership — so they can be replicated and expanded. It will also support proposed schools with the potential to be high quality.

The widening focus is a shift from an early plan leaked last year that was developed by the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation to expand charter schools in LA.

“This is a different kind of initiative, very different than has been attempted in Los Angeles before,” said Myrna Castrejon, GPSN’s executive director. “I am particularly excited about the opportunity to really work across sectors to really strengthen all of public education.”

The other notable change from the draft plan is the dearth of details. The new plan does not list a specific dollar amount the organization aims at raising, it does not give a timeframe for getting the 160,000 students at the struggling schools enrolled in successful ones, it does not list potential donors, and it does not name any specific school — charter, magnet or otherwise — as a model it wants to replicate.

Yolie Flores, a GPSN board member and former member of the LA Unified school board, said some more details will be released during a news conference on Thursday where several grant winners will be announced. But she also said the board is newly formed and still ironing out the details.

“I think you are going to hear some details on Thursday about the work,” she said. “Part of it is the board just came together. We have a lot of work to do to shape the plan. We want an opportunity to shape that plan.”

The strategy to fund the “whole school” rather than a specific program also represents a shift in education reform efforts in LA, so that all resources, and not just one program, within a school are aligned with the mission of student success.

Castrejon calls it the “within these four walls” strategy.

Myrna Castrejon, executive director of Great Public Schools Now

It “comes down to really healthy and robust school cultures that have the ability to envision what the work for kids will be, and have the sufficient, if you will, autonomy and responsibility and accountability to each other and to their community to be able to execute on that,” she said.

While the GPSN plan differs from last summer’s charter-focused plan, the success of independent charter schools in LA laid the foundation for the latest evolution of education reform in the city, several board members said.

Bill Siart, GPSN’s chairman, said the track record that some schools have had over the last decade in improving outcomes for students in low-income neighborhoods means that replicating success is now possible in a way that wasn’t before.

“The real key is this is different than most of the reform efforts that I’ve actually been involved with and seen,” said Siart, who is also chairman of ExED, a nonprofit that provides business and support services to charter schools. “Fortunately we have had enough time with a number of schools that we have really well performing schools in poor areas. Historically, frankly there wasn’t enough examples of that. But now it’s clearly possible and it’s not just one or two — it’s dozens.”

Castrejon said it is one lesson learned from charter schools that have developed strong school cultures where all resources within the school are aligned to a mission of student success. “What’s exciting about this is we have an opportunity to extend that theory of action, if you will, into the district,” she said. “I think that’s a major, major difference of how school reform efforts have taken shape in Los Angeles and something that will, hopefully, be able to orient our work to great impact at an accelerated pace.”

And there is a demand from parents for successful schools. In its report, GPSN said there are more than 40,000 students who are on waiting lists for charter schools and “thousands more” attempt to enroll in the district’s popular magnet school programs.

LA Unified Superintendent Michelle King said in a statement, “As I have said from the beginning, we are always looking for solutions that address the needs of all students. Any plan that looks to replicate high-quality public schools, including district schools, is one we look forward to hearing more about. In fact, the board recently voted to explore ways to create more high-quality district schools and to look for outside resources in doing so. This initiative seems consistent with that directive.”

Castrejon said she has already met with King two or three times and plans on more meetings this summer and fall to hash out the details of their work as it relates to district schools. She estimated the first results of some of the implementation will be seen in about a year.

GPSN also is revealing today the makeup of its seven-person board, all of whom boast decades of experience in education. In addition to Siart and Flores, who is also a senior fellow at the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading, the board members are Gregory McGinity, executive director of the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation; Maria Casillas, founder of Families in Schools; Virgil Roberts, chairman of the board of Families in Schools; Marc Sternberg, K-12 education program director for the Walton Family Foundation, and Allison Keller, senior vice president and chief financial officer and executive director of the W.M. Keck Foundation.

LA School Report received a copy of the official plan in advance under the stipulation that it not share or discuss it. (Come back today for reactions to the plan from key players in Los Angeles education.)

Last summer’s early plan, published in the Los Angeles Times in August, outlined a bold initiative to fund a massive expansion of independent charter schools. It was very specific in its goal, which was to enroll half of all LA Unified’s students into charter schools within eight years by raising close to half a billion dollars. It listed specific donors it wanted to court and also listed specific charter organizations it held up as models to expand, including several large charter management organizations in LA Unified such as KIPP Public Charter Schools, Alliance College-Ready Public Schools and Green Dot Public Schools.

That plan was heavily criticized by UTLA, the LA teachers union, and several board members, including President Steve Zimmer and Scott Schmerelson, who characterized it as a plan that could bankrupt the district and wipe out the union due to the massive per-pupil funding the district could lose. The board also passed a unanimous resolution in January stating its opposition to the plan.

Independent charters are publicly financed but privately run schools that receive their funding directly, so every time a student leaves a traditional LA Unified school, state and federal funding follows the student. LA Unified already has 101,000 out of its roughly 650,000 students enrolled in independent charters, the most of any district in the country, and is facing major budget shortfalls in the coming years, in part due to a continued loss of enrollment to charters.

“This is not an all-kids plan or an all-kids strategy,” Zimmer told LA School Report in September. “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.”

At the time of the early plan’s publication in the Times — several GPSN board member characterized its publication as a leak — it was still connected with the Broad Foundation, a major funder of charter schools in Los Angeles. Since then, GPSN was formed and took over the plan from the Broad Foundation and has been working to distance itself from the draft plan ever since. In November, GPSN announced its funding would not just be for charters, but also for district-run schools. Siart and several other board members also told LA School Report that no new members of the board had anything to do with the draft plan.

With the board made up of people connected to several major funders of charter schools, such as the Walton Family Foundation and the W.M. Keck Foundation, and the current plan not being detailed about how much money will go to charters vs. district schools, it is not clear if the official plan today will curb the criticism and skepticism last year’s draft received.

Siart and other board members repeatedly stressed that last year’s draft did not reflect GPSN’s current intentions. Siart also said members of GPSN had met with Superintendent King and she expressed support.

“We sat down with the new superintendent and conceptually talked about what we were trying to do, and about how this is better schools for kids, which she is supportive of. I don’t know how she couldn’t be supportive. And we said it’s not just for charters, which is what the other plan was focused on. It could be for magnets or traditional schools.”

King was promoted to superintendent in January after serving as deputy to the previous two superintendents, John Deasy and Ramon Cortines. In March, when asked at a town hall meeting about the district’s perceived bias toward charter schools, she said, “It is unfortunate we have labels, saying that this one is better than that one. It’s not us versus them.”

“I definitely think the fact that you’re hearing similar things from both of us is quite intentional,” Castrejon said. “It does represent a new way for the district to pursue amplifying the impact of what they’re doing. My conversation with the superintendent has been focused on talking generally about how do we see this playing out. Certainly the district’s interest in expanding the reach of magnets and other innovative programs that are delivering results for kids, we’re very much aligned in that.”

Although it wasn’t included in today’s released plan, Roberts said GPSN may also fund schools in the LA area that are not part of LA Unified, including Compton Unified and Inglewood Unified. Roberts also stressed that the plan is about funding all kinds of schools that are successful.

“We are taking a different approach now and saying our goal is to create schools for kids who have been underserved. And we will create those schools wherever we find them and whoever wants to make them work. So it’s not about expanding charter schools. The focus is on kids,” Roberts said.

The money for the schools the organization wants to replicate will fund four areas: community outreach and engagement, teacher preparation programs, securing adequate facilities and school replication grants.

Siart said GPSN is waiting until the fall when a possible accountability plan is released by the state, which will help GPSN define what the bar is for a successful school the group wants to help expand or replicate. He also explained that in order to receive grants, a school must have a proven track record of helping poor students achieve academic success and have a desire to expand or replicate its operations.

“The people running the charter or the magnet would have to want to replicate. If they are happy and satisfied with what they are doing we are very excited about that, but that’s not something we would fund,” Siart said.

The plan released today does not address the potential impact its expansion of quality schools may have on nearby traditional schools that are struggling. The plan calls on replicating good schools, not improving failing ones, but if those struggling schools lose enrollment to the expanded GPSN-funded schools, it seems a logical conclusion those schools could close or have to lay off staff, which would cost LA Unified budget money.

“That’s not an easy decision to make [about closing schools], and it’s premature to make right now,” Flores said. “Nobody deserves to be in a failing school. Not a teacher, not a principal, not a child, not a parent. So we ought to be proud that we are going to phase out failing schools and move into a quality school environment for every single student at LA Unified. And be thoughtful about what that means.

“We need to be very conscious of what does this mean for the infrastructure, what does this mean for the finalizing of the district and what does that mean for peoples’ jobs and livelihood? These are important questions that I’m not going to skirt under the table. I think we all have to do this together, but we should not condemn kids to falling schools because we care about those other things. We should care about those other things, but not at the expense of what children need to have a good education.”

Disclosure: LA School Report is the West Coast bureau of The74Million.org, which is funded in part by the Walton Family Foundation.

*Updated to correct Gregory McGinity’s title and to clarify that no new board members were involved in the draft plan. 

(Photo: IDEA Public Schools)

Three charter management organizations (CMOs) were named as finalists for the 2016 Broad Prize for Public Charter Schools, the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools and The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation announced today.

The finalists are Success Academy Charter Schools in New York, IDEA Public Schools and YES Prep Public Schools. IDEA and YES Prep are in Texas, but IDEA announced recently that it is expanding for the first time beyond Texas and is eyeing numerous other states for new schools, including Washington, Idaho and Nevada.

• Read more: Big IDEAS: High-Achieving South Texas Charter Network Reveals National Expansion Plan

The winner of the $250,000 prize, which is given to the best-performing CMO serving significant numbers of low-income students and students of color, will be announced June 27 at the National Charter Schools Conference in Nashville, Tenn.

The Broad Foundation is based in Los Angeles, which has the most charter students of any district in the nation, but none of the finalists operate schools in LA, although eight that operate in LA were eligible this year. In 2014, KIPP Public Charter Schools, which operates 13 schools in Los Angeles as part of a national network, won the award.

The finalists are determined by a seven-member review board of national education experts who review “publicly available student performance and college-readiness data from the 2014-15 school year for 30 of the country’s largest public charter management organizations, compiled and analyzed by American Institutes for Research,” according to the Broad Foundation.

Congrats to @IDEAschools @SuccessCharters & @YESPrep on being named to the #BroadPrize top 3, and thank you for all you do for students.

— Eli Broad (@UnreasonableEli) May 18, 2016

“The Broad Prize is an opportunity to celebrate the success of charter schools that are improving academic performance while reducing achievement gaps,” said Nina Rees, president and CEO of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, in a statement. “These three school systems are doing a phenomenal job of teaching all students and preparing them for a strong path ahead, and we really hope that public schools across the country can learn from their success.”

Priscilla Wohlstetter is a professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Education and has been on the review panel since the charter award was first given out five years ago. She explained that among the criteria the review panel looks at, larger CMOs tend to be favored because evidence of having a replicable model is ranked high. Since many large CMOs in LA are focused solely on LA, this hurt their chances of winning the Broad prize.

“Many of the CMOs in LA tend to be very limited into certain geographic areas. And many people on the board — although there are no formal guidelines — come to the conclusion that if a charter management organization can succeed in different districts and different states with different authorizers, they are more replicable,” Wohlstetter said in an interview.

“Los Angeles’s public charter management organizations have always had a strong showing in the CMOs eligible for The Broad Prize for Public Charter Schools,” said Gregory McGinity, executive director of The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, in an email. “Networks like Green Dot Public Schools, Alliance College-Ready Public Schools, Partnerships to Uplift Communities and others provide a great education to their students, especially those from low-income families and communities of color. In 2014, KIPP Schools, which operates KIPP LA, won The Broad Prize for Public Charter Schools. With each year of the prize, we see a growing number of charter networks with impressive student achievement. We expect charter management organizations across the country to continue to raise the bar for what’s possible when it comes to providing great educational opportunities for all students.”

For more than a decade the foundation also awarded an annual $1 million prize to a top school district in the nation, but paused the prize in 2015 after saying a worthy district could not be found.

Eli and Edythe Broad

“In this fifth year of The Broad Prize for Public Charter Schools, we had the highest number of eligible charter management organizations, which demonstrates that these systems are growing and serving more low-income families and communities of color,” McGinity said in a statement. “These three charter organizations are proving that all students can achieve at high levels, and we’re pleased to recognize their continuing progress.”

The Broad Foundation and National Alliance for Public Charter Schools provided the following descriptions of the finalists:

• IDEA Public Schools is a network of 44 elementary, middle and high schools in Texas that serves more than 24,000 students in San Antonio, Austin and the Rio Grande Valley. IDEA’s student population is 87 percent low-income and 95 percent Hispanic. In 2014-2015, all of IDEA’s schools were in the top 30 percent of Texas schools for advanced proficiency for low-income and Hispanic students in elementary, middle and high school English, math and science. That same year, 97 percent of their Hispanic students took the ACT, while the high school graduation rate for IDEA’s Hispanic students was 99 percent.
• Success Academy Charter Schools is the largest public charter school network in New York City, with 34 elementary, middle and high schools serving 11,000 students in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx. Success Academy’s student population is 76 percent low-income and 93 percent black or Hispanic. In the analysis of assessment data for the 2014-2015 school year, Success Academy’s low-income, black and Hispanic middle school students outperformed their non-low-income and white peers statewide in English, math and science at both the proficient level and the advanced level.
• YES Prep is a network of 15 elementary, middle and high schools that serves more than 10,000 students in Houston. YES Prep’s student population is 87 percent low-income and 85 percent Hispanic. In 2014-2015, YES Prep’s Hispanic high school students scored in the top 20 percent of all high schools in Texas at both the proficient and advanced levels. Nearly 60 percent of YES Prep’s Hispanic students took an Advanced Placement (AP) course that year, with nearly half of those students achieving a passing score of 3 or higher. Ninety-six percent of YES Prep’s Hispanic students took the SAT, and 88 percent graduated.

The blue stars represent current IDEA schools; the yellow dots represent schools expected to open in 2018. The blue dots represent regions of interest for future growth where IDEA has connected with local leaders, while the red dots are regions that IDEA is interested in exploring but hasn’t communicated with. (Photo credit: IDEA Public Schools)

While none of the finalists were CMOs that operate schools in Los Angeles, the Broad Foundation is heavily involved in the city and is funding a non-profit, Great Public Schools Now, that seeks to expand access to high-quality public schools in Los Angeles, including charter schools. The plan has been denounced by opponents on the school board and the LA teachers union, UTLA, as one that threatens the financial solvency of the district due to the potential enrollment loss.

While an early plan that was reported last summer called for enrolling half of all LA Unified students in charters, Great Public Schools Now has since said the plan is being retooled and will also include financing for high-performing district schools and models, although the full details have yet to be released.

Disclosure: LA School Report partners with The 74, whose co-founder and editor-in-chief, Campbell Brown, sits on the board of Success Academy.

In Los Angeles, a leaked draft of a plan to dramatically expand charter school access in America’s second-largest school district has become a lightning rod development for advocates of traditional public schools.

The war of words intensified last week at the Huffington Post when American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten attacked LA charter expansion as “part of a coordinated national effort to decimate public schooling by rigging the system against neighborhood public schools and the students they serve.” Arguing that charter schools had a mixed track record, Weingarten said “a well-regarded Stanford University study found that charter school students were doing only slightly better in reading than students in traditional public schools, but at the same time doing slightly worse in math.”

A prominent critique of Weingarten’s essay (and her use of data) came from Macke Raymond, co-author of that same well-regarded Stanford study. Raymond took strong exception to Weingarten’s interpretation of her findings.

But for those in LA, these debates involving national figures may ultimately be less helpful than a discussion about research that focuses specifically on the performance of existing charter schools in the city. It’s these numbers that add more light than heat to the debate — at least on the West Coast.

And that research shows LA elementary and middle charter schools, which currently work with a more advantaged population of students, achieving notably higher test score growth than district schools.

So as Los Angeles wrestles with the vision of the Broad Foundation to increase the number of city charter schools, let’s take a closer look at three detailed studies of the Los Angeles charter sector:

1. Stanford: On average, LA charter schools outperform traditional public schools.

Raymond’s Stanford-based organization, CREDO, finds that overall students in Los Angeles charter schools make greater gains on standardized tests in both math and reading than students at district schools.

CREDO, which has produced the most widely cited charter studies, estimates that 48 percent of Los Angeles charters outperform the district average in reading, while 39 percent score about the same and 13 percent do worse. In math, 44 percent of charters outscore the traditional public school average, 34 percent do about the same and 22 percent do worse.

Source: CREDO

While some of the gains are modest, Los Angeles charters appear to be particularly effective in their middle school math results and for students who enrolled for multiple years. Poor Hispanic students attending charter schools did especially well, while the impact for black, white and Asian students was small.

The study used scores between 2010–2012 and showed smaller gains for charter schools in the last year of data.

Source: CREDO

The researchers make estimates by comparing charter school students to “virtual twins” — students who look similar on paper — enrolled in district schools. The method is a serious attempt to make apples-to-apples comparisons, but it’s been criticized because it’s not clear that the study can account for what researchers call “unobservable” differences between charter vs. district students, such as levels of parent involvement.1 This is a longstanding challenge in education research, though one review found that CREDO’s methods lined up with other credible approaches.

2. Berkeley: Charter middle schools produce significant achievement gains.

Another major study on Los Angeles charter schools from the University of California, Berkeley, found that between 2007 and 2011, charter elementary and middle schools were producing larger achievement gains than district schools. No differences were found at the high school level. (This contrasts with an earlier study by the same researchers between 2002 and 2008 showing that charters weren’t doing any better than the district.)

Results were particularly positive in middle school math for students who switched from a traditional public school to a charter school. The magnitude of the effects in the Berkeley study were generally in the same ballpark as the CREDO study.

Source: University of California Berkeley

Charter critics still seized on the research because it provided evidence for what many had long argued: that charters were serving a more-advantaged population of students than district schools.

The study found that charter students generally had higher baseline test scores and were somewhat less likely to be economically disadvantaged or have limited English proficiency. This was particularly so for a relatively small group of “affiliated charters,” which are unionized, district-run schools that operate with some degree of autonomy.

Source: University of California Berkeley

Study co-author Bruce Fuller said, “We are not suggesting that charter schools unfairly cherry-pick stronger students or highly committed families. However, parents with more savvy or time seem more likely to seek out stronger schools.”

Still, the larger achievement gains are not likely because charter students came from families with more money and stronger English skills, for example, since the researchers made extensive efforts to control for such differences.

The California Charter Schools Association was critical of the study for lumping in affiliated charters — which it calls “charter schools in name only” — with other independent, autonomous charter schools.

The group also raised concerns about the finding that charters serve students with higher baseline test scores since the report relied on tests conducted at the end of second grade. That means, the group argued, that one reason elementary charter school students have higher test scores is because they attended a charter that helped boost their achievement in early grades.

In an email, Fuller acknowledged that this concern — that charter school second-graders had higher test scores because the schools themselves are better not because they started school further along than their district peers — “could be true” but said that the differences in performance were fairly large and so not likely explained by the charters’ effectiveness.

3. UCLA: Students at high-performing charters more likely to score better on tests, stay in school.

Lastly, a small University of California, Los Angeles study found that students who attended high-performing charter high schools had higher test scores, were more likely to stay in school and less likely to engage in high-risk behavior including binge drinking, drug use (other than marijuana) and unprotected sex. However, the research only focused on three charter high schools — out of 20 in the city at the time — deemed high performing, so the results can’t be generalized to other charter high schools.

Research alone is not going to quiet the controversy over charter expansion in LA, but elected officials, educators, parents and other stakeholders don’t have to look much beyond their own backyard if they want relevant data to inform that debate.

Disclosure: Raymond’s research group, The 74 and LA School Report have received funding from the Walton Family Foundation.

Footnotes:

1. Another concern about the study is that the authors aren’t able to find virtual twins — i.e. “matches” — for all charter school students, meaning some simply aren’t included in the study. For Los Angeles, 93 percent of students had matches. To the extent that the achievement effects for the remaining seven percent vary from the rest, the results may be biased.

This article was published in partnership with The74Million.org

As part of demonstrations taking place at schools around LA Unified and in cities across the country, a group of roughly 100 protesters made up of parents, students, district leaders and politicians gathered outside Hamilton High School Wednesday morning to rally in support of public education.

“Every day at this school I’m exposed to someone with different experiences,” said senior class president Brittany Pedrosa. “The cultural diversity makes it so beautiful.”

Pedrosa’s fellow students talked about being at Hamilton with special needs, or in special programs like music, arts or Arabic language, with teachers and counselors who help them even after hours. They also talked about having class sizes of more than 40 students and not having enough resources. One student talked about coming over from Mexico at 6 years old with her sister.

Alex Caputo-Pearl

“I remember coming home from school with my sister surrounded by my uncles helping me with English homework. Those were the hardest years of my life,” said Jessica Garcia. “Now I will be the first in my family to go to college.”

Alex Caputo-Pearl, president of the LA teachers union, UTLA, said that 40 cities throughout the country and 170 schools at LAUSD alone were participating in the Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools demonstrations.

“I just got off the phone with the people in Chicago and this is happening all over the country where we are highlighting great programs in sustainable neighborhood community schools,” Caputo-Pearl said. “If billionaires want to be involved, they should not undermine programs, they should contribute their fair share in taxes.”

Caputo-Pearl was talking about the non-profit Great Public Schools Now program, which was started by the Broad Foundation and has announced a plan to expand the number of charter schools at LA Unified. Megan Baaske, representing Great Public Schools Now, was at Hamilton observing the event and handing media a statement saying, “Great Public Schools Now is an effort dedicated to expanding high-quality public schools, not privatizing them. We hope to work constructively with any group that shares our deep desire to improve education in Los Angeles, and we support all communities who are rallying for better schools.”

The statement added, “While we know that creating meaningful change for kids can be difficult, even controversial, we feel the urgency of bringing successful schools to neighborhoods still in need of better options. To accomplish that, we are looking forward to funding teachers and leaders to replicate what works and to support communities to demand that all schools move towards excellence. We are eager to have a thoughtful discussion about the future of education in Los Angeles without impugning the motives of those who disagree with us or resorting to ad hominem attacks.”

Pumping her first in the air and shouting, American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten said she was angry because “I heard people say that public education is failing. If I sound angry it is because I am fighting for solving the problems. Every school in America should have the resources and create the climate for what we have on these stairs right now.”

LA Unified Superintendent Michelle King, who worked for a decade at Hamilton, stood in the background of all the activity. Although she was mentioned during the speeches, she did not speak herself.

“I’m here to celebrate Hamilton and the great work going on here. I’m here to see the kids and the faculty,” King told LA School Report.

After the walk-in King went to greet the school’s band teacher, Stephen McDonough, and also gave a hug to the only female drummer in the marching band. King told her, “You stick in there, girl. I’m proud of you.”

Councilman Paul Koretz went to school at Hamilton

Los Angeles City Councilman Paul Koretz spoke at the rally and said a long-retired teacher at the school, Wayne Johnson, was responsible for sparking his interest in politics.

“If it wasn’t for what he taught me, I wouldn’t be in office now,” Koretz said. “But having over 40 kids in a classroom is a little difficult and it could be made better.”

LA Unified school board President Steve Zimmer led the procession into the school with a marching band and the charge: “We walk in!” School board member George McKenna and Juan Flecha, president of the Associated Administrators of Los Angeles, were also among those walking in at Hamilton.

“We walk in for the future of public education and we know that any plan, any strategy to change public education must be about all students, not some students,” Zimmer said.

He added, “We walk against the hate we see spewed in the debates and the rhetoric about the children you just heard about our schools, about our teachers, we can overcome this by linking arms together like we are about to do and seeing great things that are happening in our public schools. Their dreams are our dreams. Their schools are our schools. Their future is our future.”

With that, the marching band, teachers, parents and students walked into the foyer of the school and gathered around a marble life-sized statue of Alexander Hamilton, for whom the school is named.

Zimmer told LA School Report afterward, “It was great to see the students speak for themselves about what they are getting out of this school, and the programs they are involved in, but also the improvements they can make. I was very proud of them.”

After three revisions, a resolution aimed at curtailing future charter school expansion in LA Unified is finally coming before the school board for a vote on Tuesday.

While the measure is largely symbolic in that it cannot change policy regarding charter growth — that is a state matter — it’s a way to open a “difficult conversation that is long overdue,” said its only sponsor, Scott Schmerelson.

General in scope, the resolution is an obvious response to the Broad Foundation-inspired plan, Great Public Schools Now, that is proposing a dramatic increase in the number of LA Unified charters over the next eight years. Schmerelson and other board members have characterized the plan as dangerous to the district’s traditional schools.

“As a retired, life-long LAUSD educator, I believe that I have a moral obligation to raise awareness and understanding of externally driven strategies that support the uncontrolled proliferation of charter schools at the expense of the District’s ability to adequately provide for the needs of all students, especially the most disadvantaged students who rely on public education,” Schmerelson told LA School Report.

As impassioned as the resolution may be, it’s effectively toothless in terms of changing how the district deals with charter applications and renewal requests that come before the board. State law creates the rules for charters, and it only provides for denials in the cases of questionable finances or managerial weakness.

In his review of the resolution, LA Unified’s chief legal counsel, David Holmquist, said as much: “It should be noted that any analysis done by the district on any charter school proposal needs to be in accordance with the provisions of the Education Code.” He added, “The Board should be cautioned against using any fiscal impact to the district and potential decrease in revenues as bases for denying a charter.”

That’s part of the problem, Schmerelson said, pointing to state regulations that restrict how the school board monitors, controls and approves charter schools. “We need to change state law and clarify ambiguous state and district guidelines that hamper our ability to act as responsible charter authorizers and exercise diligent oversight of existing charter schools,” he said.

Anita Landecker, interim executive director of Great Public Schools Now, said the resolution won’t impact the organization’s plan to press ahead.

“We remain focused on our goal of ensuring high quality educational options for children in underserved neighborhoods,” she said in an email to LA School Report. “Our plan will simply provide a roadmap for doing that. Our effort will not be materially impacted by motions like this, as the true work will be done by hard working educators who are simply trying to grow and expand their high quality schools.”

She added, “We look forward to working collaboratively with LAUSD, including the new superintendent, to achieve that goal.”

Schmerelson first introduced his “Excellent Public Education for Every Student” measure in November, and it was rewritten three times. Ultimately, he removed language that specifically asked the board to “oppose” the Broad plan, changing it to say the board “stands opposed to external initiatives that seek to reduce public education in Los Angeles to an educational marketplace and our children to market shares.”

He also re-inserted a request that the superintendent “analyze external proposals targeting LAUSD for their impact in terms of enrollment, fiscal viability and LAUSD’s ability to provide an outstanding public education” — a heady challenge to a new superintendent who could be named as early as next week.

Schmerelson also criticized the district for ignoring the issues posed by the Great Public Schools Now initiative.

“For too long,” he said, “the leadership of LAUSD has failed to acknowledge the collateral damage to the majority of our students when systematic, external agendas are being developed and well financed to weaken, and eventually destroy, LAUSD’s ability to provide a quality education for students who rely on our neighborhood schools and a wide range of district innovative programs and critical services.”

The resolution is up for a vote now after Schmerelson agreed to delay it at the request of board President Steve Zimmer, who has been pressing the board to concentrate on picking a new superintendent. In the meantime, charter advocacy groups declared the Schmerelson resolution unlawful and requested changes resulting in minor rewording such as “unregulated” charter schools to “under-regulated.”

The resolution, as now written, outlines nine points for the district with the goal to improve public education and to keep students in traditional schools. Those points include ensuring equitably-funded arts and music education, helping young students who “endure the disadvantages of poverty” and encouraging parent involvement in student achievement.

The only potential budget impact, according to LAUSD staff, could be the cost of the extra analysis that this resolution will lay on the new superintendent. Also, the budget could be impacted by “any litigation resulting from denying a petition on a basis that is not clearly based in law.”

Schmerelson said the conversation is something he wanted to have with fellow board members since he was elected last year.

“The purpose of my resolution is to begin to address the threat to the district’s ability to effectively serve all students in LAUSD,” he said. “I see my resolution as the beginning of a difficult conversation, that is long overdue, about the future viability of our mission and commitment to all students.”

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Bill Siart, chairman Great Public Schools Now
photo: CSU-Santa Barbara

Great Public Schools Now, the outside group seeking to expand the number of LA Unified schools serving students in high-poverty neighborhoods, has released a list of district schools — most of them charters — that represents “the kinds of schools” the organization intends to replicate in the years ahead.

The new group, an outgrowth of a plan from the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, has identified 16 charters, 8 magnets and 4 traditional schools within the district that have more than 75 percent of students qualifying for free and reduced-price meals and more than 60 percent of students who meet or exceed standards for English Language Arts.

“These schools deliver the kind of high-quality education that Great Public Schools Now will seek to help replicate,” Bill Siart, chairman of Great Public Schools Now, said in a press release today. “It’s critical that we identify what is working in our education system, and seek to expand those successes. Through our effort, we will be targeting our resources to grow these kinds of proven models in specific areas of need.”

The plans of Great Public Schools Now, first revealed by the Broad foundation over the summer, has roiled LA Unified as few issues have before. It has left the community sharply divided between supporters of charter schools as a better option for students and charter opponents, who see the plan as a major threat for its potential to drain students and resources from an already financially-challenged district of more than 600,000 students.

The group is seeking to raise nearly half billion dollars in an effort that was originally aimed at creating 230 charter schools to serve half the district’s student population. Once the plan was formalized under the new organization, its leaders said the effort might not reach 203 schools but would include financial support for high-performing traditional schools in low-income areas.

At its monthly meeting tomorrow, the LA Unified board is scheduled to vote on a resolution from member Scott Schmerelson that would put the board on record as opposing “external initiatives” that serve anything less than the entire district.

In terms of deciding the criteria for whether a school has or could become high-quality, the group said it would base decisions on “multiple measures such as state assessments, graduation rates, and other metrics.”

The 28 schools cited as examples include several common elements, GPSN said in its release. They include evidence that the schools have demonstrated an ability to “provide all students with a high-quality education” and that because “multiple models” have succeeded, “Great Public Schools Now is considering how to invest in multiple types of public schools to expand the number of high-quality options for students throughout Greater Los Angeles.

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Eli Broad

The executive director of the state charter schools political action committee sent an email to the LA Unified school board and other district officials yesterday, offering a sharp response to a story in the Los Angeles Times that was highly critical of the group’s campaign finance reporting practices.

“I am reaching out to you to ensure that you have the facts, which are sadly neglected in this article,” wrote Gary Borden, executive director of California Charter School Association Advocates. “Unfortunately, the Times has decided to turn common and fully legal electoral practice into ‘gotcha’ politics. The article simply does not reflect the reality or the integrity of our electoral practices.”

The article highlighted how donors to a political action committee who funneled millions of dollars into this year’s LA Unified school board races were “shielded” from having their identify revealed until after the May 19 election. The donors included high-profile charter school supporters, including Eli Broad, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Carrie W. Penner of the Walton family.

At issue was the fact that donations were made to a Sacramento-based PAC, which then gave the money to a Los Angeles-based PAC that supported the election efforts of three CCSA-endorsed candidates. The article points out that if the contributions had been made directly to the local PAC, the donors’ names would have been revealed before the election.

The article stated that the practice “appears to be within the law” but quoted several officials and academics who were critical of the practice. Due to the multi-step process of moving the money from the Sacramento PAC to the local PAC, the donors’ names were not publicly revealed until September, when CCSA Advocates was required by law to disclose its contributors in a California campaign finance report.

Borden said this practice was nothing but routine.

“We are very proud of our compliance and transparency record. The Fair Political Practices Commission and our independent auditors have consistently found our reporting to be fully compliant,” he wrote. “In the case of the last school board elections here in Los Angeles, we formed a local entity to communicate with voters, which received funding from a statewide political action committee — which is routine in the world of modern political campaigning.”

The local PAC, named Parent Teacher Alliance in Support of Rodriguez, Galatzan, and Vladovic for School Board 2015, spent $2.7 million in supporting the reelection efforts of Tamar Galatzan and Richard Vladovic and for the election of Ref Rodriguez. The LA teachers union, UTLA, spent about $1.6 million supporting Scott Schmerelson, who defeated Galatzan, and former board member Bennett Kayser, who lost to Rodriguez.

Both UTLA and the CCSA Advocates supported Vladovic, who won reelection.

The Times article comes as the issue of charter schools — and their deep-pocketed supporters — is being raised to new heights in the district. In August, a $490 million charter school expansion plan backed by the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation was publicly revealed. The stated goal of the plan was to eventually have half of all district students enrolled in charter schools, which immediately drew the ire of some board members and UTLA.

Charter schools are privately run, publicly funded institutions that typically employ non-union teachers. LA Unified already has more charter schools than any district in the nation, and since the plan would drain the district’s enrollment and reduce UTLA membership, it has been controversial.

Since the plan was revealed, a non-profit separate from the Broad Foundation was formed to support the charter expansion plan, and the group has stated it will also fund traditional schools.

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The Soulsville neighborhood in Memphis, Tenn. has the unpleasant distinction of being the 12th most dangerous in the country. Local residents have a one-in-nine chance of becoming a crime victim there within a year. The Soulsville Charter School is located on College Street, and the joke is that the street name is as close as most of the locals will get to “College.” The ZIP code, 38106, is among the poorest in the nation.

“This is not just one of the poorest ZIP codes in Memphis, or in Tennessee, but one of the poorest in the whole country,” says Calvin Stovall, the CEO of the Soulsvillle Foundation which runs the Stax Museum, the Stax Music Academy and the Soulsville Charter School — all right next to each other near downtown Memphis. “I like to see us as a little flower blossoming amongst all the concrete.”

I recently visited Soulsville  as a member of the board of the non-profit California Institute of Contemporary Arts, which presented a grant to the Stax Music Academy this month to help it attract more students into its program.

For all the ravages of the charter wars in LA, where I cover LA Unified as a reporter, I was struck by the utter absence of such a struggle in Memphis, where public schools and charter schools co-exist but don’t try to steal students away from each other.

In a world where billionaires are throwing around money to help create education models in underprivileged neighborhoods, the 640 students at Soulsville Charter seem to be forgotten — or for some reason, ignored — by charter groups. The school has a proven track record of academic success, winning multiple awards in just four years of existence, named one of the best schools in the state, getting 100 percent college acceptance of graduates, and their 207 graduates have been offered more than $30 million in scholarships.

But outside help or even interest from an education reform group is non-existent. 

Students from the Stax Music Academy

“We would love to have the Broad foundation come to fund our charter school,” laughs Stovall. “We will welcome them with open arms.”

The Broad Foundation offers a prize for Urban Education, but for the past 12 years it eluded the Soulsville Charter ZIP code and the state of Tennessee, altogether. It’s not just Broad; many of the education reform groups seem more interested in school systems that may not want them or those in higher-profile parts of the country.

NaShante Brown, the executive director of Soulsville Charter, says the school gets little help from the big companies such as Federal Express based in Memphis. There simply is too much competition for a lot of good charitable causes in the region.

The school doesn’t charge students to enroll, just like in Los Angeles, and it has a 200-family waiting list. Yet, it costs Soulsville Charter $9,500 to educate each student per year, and  it only gets $7,500 per student in public funds. The rest comes from donors, including the thriving music museum next door.

“Memphis kids need a lot of support,” says Brown, whose school is 99 percent black and 1 percent Latino — the one white family moved away recently. “We have a commitment from the families and the students to do their best and be involved.”

A recent tour of the school revealed an immaculate campus quite different from the graffiti-laden surroundings in the neighborhood. The students were all neatly dressed, and the lockers have no locks because all students are on the honor system.

Many of the students come from traumatic family situations. They’ve dealt with drug and alcohol issues at very young ages. The school becomes a cocoon for them from the difficulties of their real world. Children want to come to school.

Calvin Stovall, CEO of Soulsville

“We are about building character and culture,” Brown explains.

About 120 students come after school from all over the city to the Stax Music Academy, which teaches them about all kinds of music. They sing, play instruments, write music and study the history of Memphis blues, jazz, gospel and Stax recording, which includes Otis Redding, Isaac Hayes and other famous musicians. The students perform for the community many times a year, and their successes are well-known locally. But, not as much nationally.

It’s really not hard to find a school that is doing amazing things with proven track records of success in every part of the country. But it strikes me as odd, and maybe even a little sad, that so many reform groups spend their time and resources where they’re not so much wanted while other communities would welcome any help they might get.

I’m sure that if LA Unified succeeds in keeping the Broads of the world out, schools like Soulsville would be first in line to welcome them in.

Mike Szymanski is on the board of the non-profit California Institute of Contemporary Arts that presented a grant to the Stax Music Academy this month.

Ama Nyamekye

By Ama Nyamekye

What makes a great school? This fundamental question has been lost in a heated debate about a draft proposal spearheaded by the Broad Foundation, the most controversial part of which includes a plan to accelerate charter school growth in LAUSD.

This idea has sparked concern and curiosity among parents, community members, philanthropists and most certainly our teachers. It has inspired a proposed school board resolution opposing charters, and a series of protests led by UTLA leadership who are not only concerned about the expansion of charters, but are also skeptical of philanthropists investing millions of dollars in public education.

Every group is raising related questions: What will this mean for parents waiting on long charter school lottery lists? What will this mean for our students, particularly those still served by non-charter schools? What will this mean for the future of my job and my school; for the future of our union and district, both entities facing declining enrollment and, with it, declining dollars? Will this spark a real conversation about school equity and innovation or will this bring more polarization and turf wars in public education?

Put another way, these questions come down to one thing: Whose side are you on?

As the head of a local teacher leadership organization working with educators across the district, I stand with our most dedicated teachers who often tell me that no single solution, like charter schools, will be the silver bullet for ensuring access to a high-quality education for all students. It is equity that is at the heart of a great school, and that is the goal teachers are working towards. I know this because I have witnessed equity arguments echoed in every teacher-written policy paper, teacher-led advocacy campaign, and teacher-penned media article produced by E4E members.

These teachers tell us that a great school is defined by its great leaders and practitioners. Investing in the most well-intentioned school models won’t bring about change without understanding how those models can shift policies, practices and culture on the ground. To understand how these models can best work, we need to learn from the perspectives and solutions of teachers and school leaders. Their insights are invaluable and should inform how philanthropists and policy makers invest in education.

The challenges facing our schools are complex and nuanced, which is why our district, union, philanthropy and community organizations should be thinking about and investing in a range of solutions. Teachers, particularly those who have helped launch their own schools, believe that great schools offer innovative models and programs to tackle tough challenges facing students.

Similarly, district and philanthropic leaders should be thinking and investing more expansively in diverse and innovative school models like pilots, magnets, community schools, Linked Learning schools in addition to charters. This also means coupling that investment with real support and clear accountability to ensure that greater dollars yield greater results for our students.

Our finest teachers know that a great school prioritizes the hearts and minds of students, who cannot be forgotten in this debate. It is our students — most of whom are youth of color — who will be the collateral damage of adult-centered fights that produce more polarization instead of great schools. In California — one of the wealthiest places in the world — where our public schools rank 46th out of 50 in per-pupil funding, we need greater engagement and investment in our children’s education.

The unfinished, rough draft of the Broad Foundation’s proposal is actually entitled “The Great Public Schools Now” initiative. As an organization funded in part by the Broad Foundation as well as hundreds of individual supporters, teachers and other foundations, Educators 4 Excellence humbly calls on educators, the civil rights community and the Broad Foundation to ensure this title rings true by expanding the initiative into an opportunity to think beyond a pure charter-school approach and, instead, push for investments in great schools, great teachers, great leaders and great school policies. Teachers are eager to give input on how this evolving plan can invest more expansively in great schools for all students.

Amid this heated debate about charter expansion, we must refocus on the essential question at hand–what makes a great school? While fights and protests over a rough draft we disagree with may feel cathartic, it will not be as effective as working with diverse community, education and civil rights groups to answer this fundamental question and influence the vision for a plan to create great schools for all students.

Ama Nyamekye is a former English teacher and Executive Director of Educators 4 Excellence-Los Angeles

The plan has drawn rebuke from other board members and the LA teachers union, UTLA, which organized protests on the issue across this city this morning.

But the resolution, which appears largely symbolic, raises one key question: Other than objecting to the charter plan, what can the board really do to stop it?

According to the California Charters School Association (CCSA), a close reading of the state’s 1992 Charter School Act reveals the answer: Not much.

“The act is very clear in the statutes that charter schools should be encouraged and it narrows the grounds on which a school board can deny a charter petition. So it does not give school boards wide discretion,” said Ricardo Soto, general counsel for CCSA.

Board President Steve Zimmer has strongly denounced the Broad plan, previously telling LA School Report it is “not an all-kids plan or an all-kids strategy. 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.”

But missing from Zimmer’s denunciation — then or since — is a plan to oppose the Broad effort in any practical way, demonstrating how limited even the most motivated school board is when it comes to stopping the proliferation of charter schools. And according to a new report out today by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, Los Angeles continues to serve the largest number of charter school students in the country, with a current waiting list of nearly 70,000.

The Charter Schools Act of 1992 lays out clear guidelines upon which a school board can deny a charter school application: Philosophical opposition to charter schools or having concerns about their impact on the district’s finances are not among them. The Schmerelson resolution specifically asks the superintendent to analyze any external proposals for their impacts on the district’s finances and enrollment.

Soto said this wording could turn a largely symbolic resolution into a very practical problem for the board.

“I think (the resolution) is inconsistent with the law and I think they shouldn’t be adopting a resolution that includes a provision that is unlawful,” he said.

Further, board member Mónica Ratliff is introducing her own charter resolution today, calling for a wide range of information that charters must convey to parents to prove that their children’s school is in full compliance with state law. The measure would appear to bolster Schmerelson’s resolution, giving it a wider legal framework from which to act.

The wording of the Schmerelson resolution isn’t the only problem the board could have if it wants to oppose the Broad plan. For one, the Broad plan isn’t really a single plan and does not intend to create a new charter organization that would operate 260 schools, but rather seeks to fund an expansion of many different charter organizations already in operation.

Even if the board were to start denying charter applications, the management company can still seek approval by appealing to county or state boards, meaning they could still open in LA and still drain the district’s enrollment numbers.

Also, if the board were to start shooting down a lot of charter applications in an effort to curb the Broad plan, Soto said it could find itself in legal trouble.

“If they were to pass this (resolution), and then all of a sudden a few months down the line we see denials of charter petitions along the lines of the resolution and not provided by law, or for no apparent reason at all, then a court would probably say the board is potentially violating the law and then you also have this resolution that clearly articulates their position against charter schools,” Soto said.

The Los Angeles Times Editorial Board also found problems with the Schmerelson resolution, writing today that it “could backfire by making any future votes against individual charter school applications appear biased. The board is required by state law to approve all sound applications for charter schools.”

The resolution also calls on the board to oppose “all initiatives that present a strategy designed to serve some students and not all students.” The Times also found this problematic, stating, “Under this definition, though, the board would have to oppose many of its own programs” including magnet schools.

The Times editorial was headlined, “It’s time to stop the whining about charter schools.” While “whining” may be an overstatement, it does appear that swaying public opinion against Broad is a major part of a strategy by Schmerelson, Zimmer and UTLA to remind the public of what they contend are severe consequences of the Broad plan advancing. For now, public opinion across the state shows Californians have a generally favorable opinion of charters.

More than 50 percent of respondents chose it as No. 1. The second most popular answer expressed a bit of cynicism, as 18 percent chose: “Yikes, look at this list. There’s no solving this. We’re doomed.”

The biggest response to any of our polls came two weeks ago when we asked readers to share their opinions on the Broad plan, and it received over 2,000 votes. This week’s poll did not light the same fire and received a much quieter response. But for those who did vote, it showed again how much the Broad effort is on the minds of our readers.

Other answers receiving significant votes were “Low student performance on standardized state tests” (10 percent), “The A through G graduation crisis” (8 percent) and “The $40 billion needed to modernize all district schools” (7 percent).

Our polls are entirely unscientific, just a fun way to take the pulse of our readers. While there are a number of filters to prevent someone from voting more than once, we cannot guarantee it can’t happen.

Our poll asking readers to share their opinions on the Broad Foundation‘s massive charter expansion plan got lots of votes and even some national attention (thank you, Diane Ravitch).

In the end, it was a virtual tie between readers responding with answers that strongly favored the Broad plan, 980, and those strongly not in favor, 977.

Altogether, 2,161 votes were cast although we cannot be sure how many came from the LA Unified community or how many reflected the effort of people who voted more than once.

While it is important to note that our polls are unscientific and just a fun way to take the pulse of our readers, the results here do reflect just how polarizing and controversial the Broad plan could prove to be should it move forward.

The pro-plan voters reflected votes on two choices:

“I support the expansion plan because the current way of doing things is not doing a good enough job improving the academic performance of enough students” (693 votes) and “I love this idea because the school district needs more quality schools,” (287).

The anti-plan voters reflected two other choices:

“I despise this idea because it harms traditional schools by taking money and resources out of the district” (767) and “I don’t believe the charter people are really interested in improving education; I think this is all about weakening the teachers union (210).

A third option, which could be viewed as lukewarm endorsement of the Broad plan, was worded, “If the district paid more attention to improving the quality of existing schools, this idea wouldn’t be necessary,” and received 186 votes.

The plan is estimated to cost almost half a billion dollars and has sent shockwaves through the district.

Leaders like board President Steve Zimmer, board member Scott Schmerelson and UTLA President Alex Caputo-Pearl condemned the plan as a hostile takeover of LA Unified, while board members Monica Garcia and Ref Rodriguez are welcoming it.

Well, what do you think? Vote in our poll below and let your voice be heard.

[polldaddy poll=9130761]

The demonstration follows the release today of a Broad-commissioned poll, showing that a large majority of city residents want more choices — charters — for their children’s education. The plan calls for 260 new charters within eight years to serve as many as half the children attending LA Unified schools.

“Broad is working with the Waltons of Walmart and other billionaires to destroy LAUSD,” UTLA says on its website. “We are demanding that the School Board join us in rejecting Broad’s parasitic plan. Losing 50% of LAUSD enrollment would trigger a severe loss in funding for crucial resources and programs for our students, cost tens of thousands of LAUSD jobs, and create a race to the bottom that will hurt all schools and all students.”

The foundation denies any destructive intent.

“Los Angeles families have made it clear that they want high-quality public school options, and we want to support them in their efforts to access educational opportunity,” Swati Pandey, the foundation’s communications manager, said in a statement. “Our only interest is in supporting the growth of high-quality public schools.”

The board is scheduled to consider approvals and five-year renewals of 15 charter schools and the creation of two magnet schools.

The two new gifted magnet centers are scheduled to open in 2016 at Kennedy High School and Taft High School. Kennedy, located in Granada Hills is a Gifted, Highly Gifted, High Ability Medical Magnet for grades 9 through 12. Taft, located in Woodland Hills, is a Gifted, Highly Gifted, High Ability Science, Technology, English, Arts and Math Magnet Center for grades 9 through 12.

“We are committed to expanding excellence in district choice options across our communities,” board president Steve Zimmer told LA School Report. “Taft and Kennedy may be the first but they certainly won’t be the last. And I expect that we will, aligned with our equity mission, focus in the near future on proposals that address in district choice options for children living in the most severe conditions of poverty and segregation.”

These are not to be confused with the dual immersion schools such as the Mandarin-immersion program in Zimmer’s district.

“Dual immersion programs are an important part of this equation,” Zimmer said. “I continue to look forward to both a comprehensive district wide plan for expanding language immersion programs and a specific proposal for supporting our programs in the Venice complex.”

Among other items, Superintendent Ramon Cortines will have his staff give an update on the district science scores (spoiler alert: they are pretty poor). The board will be asked to certify a final Environmental Impact Report for district-wide school repairs and construction for a total of $7.8 billion. The board will also discuss replacing the melting turf at athletic fields at half a dozen schools.

In another issue, the board consider approving final offers to charter school organizations seeking to share space with public schools under the state Prop 39 protocols.

Board members also have a bunch of resolutions to get approved. The most prolific at this meeting is Mónica Ratliff who has proposed resolutions recognizing National Disability Employment Awareness Month, Substitute Educators Appreciation Day, National Homeless Youth Awareness Month, Native American Heritage Month, America’s Safe Schools Week, National Retirement Security Week, Celebrating College Awareness and a Study of Parent Centers. Ratliff will also be co-sponsoring National Coming Out Day with fellow board members Mónica García and Ref Rodriguez.

Then, there are the little things (kidding), like the approval of $5 million for seven vendors doing anti-bullying campaigns, $338,000 for bathroom partitions across the district, and the approval of 9,213 routine personnel promotions, transfers, leaves and terminations.

Among the lawsuits that the board will discuss in a morning closed session is a case involving the district’s responsibility in a case involving molestation that went on at Edison Middle School. The teacher was found guilty, and LAUSD was found not responsible for the sexual liaisons that took place on and off campus.

The closed session begins at 10 a.m., with the open session scheduled to start three hours later.

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Conducted over 10 days through Oct. 1, the poll comes as tension over charters is rising within LA Unified, spurred by a report from the Broad Foundation, describing a plan to create enough charter schools to serve half the student population of LA Unified within eight years. The estimated cost of the effort is $490 million.

As the poll shows, the plan reflects wide support among families who want more educational choices for their children, especially those attending under-performing schools. At the same time, it has been sharply criticized by the teachers union, UTLA, and others as an attack on public education, a strategy that drains public funds from the district at the cost of jobs and programs.

The teachers union is planning to protest the plan tomorrow outside district headquarters as the school board meets inside.

While the results of the poll are noteworthy for the margins of support for charters and more of them, it was, nonetheless, conducted on behalf of a leading national education reform organization that is the chief architect of the charter expansion plans for LA Unified.

Among the most notable findings of the poll, which reached 1,150 voters within the district in English and Spanish on landline and cell phones, were these:

• 74 percent of respondents support the expansion of charter public schools in neighborhoods where existing schools are struggling.
• 87 percent support “reforming the public education system” in Los Angeles.
• 88 percent  favor investing in district schools through proven programs like magnet schools.
• 69 percent want additional charter public schools in their own neighborhoods.
• 88 percent support making sure every student in a district with an underperforming public school has a choice of attending a higher performing public school.

“These results make it clear that residents throughout Los Angeles are eager to expand opportunity for students, regardless of whether it comes from charter, magnet or traditional public schools,” Gregory McGinity, co-executive director at the Broad Foundation, said in a statement. “The Broad Foundation is committed to working with Los Angeles families to improve public educational opportunities for all students.”

The margin of error of the poll was plus or minus 2.9 percent.

But when all factors are considered, there is little conclusive evidence in the report outlining the expansion plans that shows big investments in charters always — or evenly routinely — achieve consistent academic improvements, raising an important question: Just what can Broad and other foundations promise for an investment of nearly half a billion dollars in an expansion effort that would dramatically change the nation’s second-largest school district?

The Broad plan points to three of LA Unified’s largest charter operators that have received Broad largess — Green Dot Public Schools, Alliance College-Ready Public Schools and KIPP Public Charter Schools — and says, “These organizations have turned our investments into significant academic gains for students.”

In some cases, the gains are clear, but in others they are not. One category shows a regression in test scores, and others that demonstrate only marginal gains.

The analysis looks at five years of “proficiency rates” for the organizations’ schools, spanning 2008-09 through 2012-13. Although the document does not explicitly say, it appears the data refers to scores on the old Standardized Testing and Reporting (STAR) exams, which were discontinued after 2012-13.

It’s also unclear what exactly “proficiency rates” refers to. For purposes of comparison with the new Smarted Balanced tests, the district and the California Charter Schools Association (CCSA) combined the top two categories, “met” and” exceeded” standards. In the previous tests, the state broke down results into four levels of achievement, with one called “Proficiency” and a superior level called “Advanced.” But it’s not clear if the Broad report used one category or combined the higher two.

Swati Pandey, the Broad Foundation communications manager, did not respond to an email, seeking an explanation.

Over five years, proficiency rates for Green Dot students in English language arts actually decreased by 3 percent, while math rates at Alliance middle schools improved a total of 1 percent and English rates at the Alliance middle schools improved a total of 5 percent over five years.

Other areas are impressive — a 20 percent gain in English proficiency for KIPP schools over four years and a 13 percent increase in math for Green Dot schools, but the report does not discuss or examine the negative and minimal gains.

The recent Smarter Balanced statewide tests, which this year replaced the STAR exams after two years without any statewide tests, also show impressive results for the three organizations, but they also raised questions. (The Broad report did not include any analysis of the Smarter Balanced tests.)

Key in any analysis is the number of English learners and low-income students — two groups that have proven to be among the most challenging to educate — and these numbers never match up quite evenly between charters and traditional schools.

An analysis by LA School Report shows Alliance schools had 45.4 percent of its students meeting or exceeding the English standards on the Smarter Balanced tests, compared with 33 percent at LA Unified’s schools.

However, Alliance has far fewer English learners. According to its website data, 18.83 percent of its students are English learners, compared with 26 percent for LA Unified. And Alliance students actually scored worse in math, with 23.5 percent meeting or exceeding standards compared with 25 percent for the district. In fairness to Alliance, its schools have 93 percent of its students qualifying for free or reduced price lunch, compared with 77 percent for the district.

KIPP and Green Dot schools fared much better on the Smarter Balanced tests, with the percentage of students meeting or exceeding standards beating LA Unified schools by double digits in both math and English.

Both the CCSA and LA Unified exchanged blows in their analysis of the Smarter Balanced results. The CCSA pointed out that LA Unified’s independent charters bested the district schools, but it was only by 2.5 percent overall in the number that met or exceeded the standards. It then released another analysis that shows if district affiliated charters were removed from the equation the demographics matched up closer and independent charters scored better than LA Unified.

The district countered with a release that showed its magnet schools outperformed charters, but it must be considered that magnets have fewer English learners and low-income students.

Jumping into the mix is the Associated Administrators of the Los Angeles (AALA), which in its recent newsletter criticized the CCSA analysis, saying the “wins” of charters on the tests are diminished “when one considers that the enrollment of traditional schools includes 6% more English learners, who presumably would be at a disadvantage on the SBAC English language arts assessment (though they were apparently not at the same disadvantage on the SBAC math assessment). In addition, the traditional schools have a slightly higher percentage of students who qualify for the federal free or reduced-price lunch program.”

AALA also said that “the analysis presented in the CCSA press release is sophomoric advocacy at the expense of rigor. Serious comparisons may only be made between schools with similar socio-economic status.”

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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.