CPD IN THE NEWS

The Times-Picayune - 05-08-2015 - Louisiana understaffs its charter schools oversight offices and, instead of proactively investigating these schools, relies on charters' own reports and whistleblowers to uncover problems, according to a report released Tuesday (May 12) by the Center for Popular Democracy and the Coalition for Community Schools. That allows theft, cheating and mismanagement to happen, such as the $26,000 stolen from Lake Area New Tech High and the years of special education violations alleged at Lagniappe Academies. 

The report also casts a skeptical eye on the veracity of the data that Louisiana uses to calculate the performance scores that keep charters open and determine their renewal terms. And it faults the state for closing struggling charters instead of intervening to improve them.

The Center for Popular Democracy's partners include the American Federation of Teachers, which has an uneasy relationship with charters, and the Annenberg Institute for School Reform, which studies charter school oversight. Kyle Serrette, the center's director of educational justice campaigns, said its parent members had children in charter and conventional public schools.

That said, one of the report's recommendations is to "impose a moratorium on new charter schools until the state oversight system is adequately reformed."

The Louisiana-based Coalition for Community Schools opposes charter schools outright and filed a civil rights complaint against the state Education Department in 2014. That complaint also included a demand to freeze chartering in New Orleans.

The two groups' report said Louisiana charters could suffer from "tens of millions of fraud in the 2013-14 school year alone," based on the methodology of the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners. In that time, employees of three New Orleans charter schools stole about $110,000, and two charter operators were accused of meddling with retirement payments.

Oversight agencies play almost no role in helping charter schools improve academic outcomes."  

"The state has invested heavily in increasing the number of charter schools while failing to create a solid regulatory framework that truly protects students, families and taxpayers," the authors write. Furthermore, "oversight agencies play almost no role in helping charter schools improve academic outcomes. ... The state has no system in place to provide a path to high-quality academics for all struggling charter schools."

Charter schools are publicly funded but run by independent non-profit boards. They control their own curriculum and hiring but must meet academic and operational standards to stay open. The state Education Department oversees most of Louisiana's 130-plus charters; local school systems oversee the rest.

Read the report

However, as of December, the Education Department's charter audit team consisted of only three people, according to a critical December report from the Louisiana legislative auditor's office. Education Superintendent John White defended his team at the time, saying they reviewed charter schools' audits, among other activities.

Tuesday's paper says that isn't enough. Not only do charters hire their own accountants to conduct annual audits, but the audits are not designed to prevent or detect fraud. Indeed, reports typically contain a disclaimer saying they are not expressing an opinion on fraud controls. The legislative auditor's office might dig deeper but rarely does so, the report states.

"The only audits Louisiana charter schools routinely undergo are the ones they pay for themselves," the authors write.

The report faults the Education Department for not spending enough time on-site at charters. Charters receive regular visits and reviews from state inspectors, and Louisiana Recovery School District officials said their own findings of wrongdoing at Lagniappe Academies in New Orleans showed that their oversight procedures worked.

The authors of Tuesday's report disagreed. The state's 2013-14 review of Lagniappe Academies gave full points for special education, the two organizations said, and it was only later that state inspectors uncovered extensive reports of violations during that time period.

"The situation at Lagniappe shows exactly the problems with the state's oversight structure for charter schools," the report says. "The state relies on a
largely self-reporting oversight structure that is easily manipulated by the schools themselves."

The authors doubt the accuracy of the test scores that are used to measure charters' academic performance, writing that the data "is vulnerable to manipulation."

Finally, the authors disagree with the state's readiness to close charters, including Lagniappe.

"Clearly there are times when problems are significant enough that a school must be closed. Yet, the current intervention (process) is designed to make school closure a normal and common part of the state's accountability system," the authors write. "The system needs to be updated to produce more stability for Louisiana children." In six years, more than 1,700 New Orleans students have seen their charter schools close, according to the report.

Louisiana's laws are "designed to set a high standard but not to help," Serrette said.

The state does at times intervene instead of closing schools, although this is not mentioned in the report. The Recovery School District has chosen successful charter operators to take over failing schools, for example, and White directed Lycée Français to find a new chief executive and assigned it a consultant team. Lycée has gone on to make a B grade, and its charter contract has been extended.

The report's recommendations include:

Require fraud audits every three years, to be conducted by the state legislative auditor's office

Train charter staff and boards on preventing fraud

Hire more staff for the legislative auditor's office and charter school oversight teams

Require "mandatory, hands-on, long-term, strategic support" for charters in trouble

Go beyond test scores when calculating school letter grades

Create local committees, including neighbors and parents, to design schools that serve the needs of a community

Coordinate social services at and around schools

Release raw testing data to the public.

Some of these issues are not unique to charters. Louisiana's conventional public schools also face pressure to keep test scores high: If they don't, they may be taken over by the state. There have been numerous examples of corruption and fraud in school boards and systems. Serrette said it was likely Louisiana's regular school systems needed stronger oversight as well.

Source: Nola.com

 

Star Tribune - 05-12-2015 - Twin Cities transit users of color spend almost 160 additional hours a year commuting when compared to whites who drive to work solo. That's according to a report out Tuesday from four advocacy groups opposing cuts to public transportation funding.

The report "It's About Time: The Transit Time Penalty and Its Racial Implications" cited infrequent service, indirect routes, delays, overcrowded vehicles, and insufficient shelter at bus stops as factors that contribute to a transit time penalty that adds time and stress to each commute. For Blacks and Asians who used public transit, that totaled an extra 3.5 weeks a year and for Latinos it was 4 hours a year of additional time required to travel between two points by public transportation, compared with going by car.

"That means that for a month a year more than white drivers, transit commuters of color are unavailable for working, helping children with homework, helping parents get to the doctor, running errands, volunteering in their communities or participating in their churches," said the report compiled by Neighborhoods Organizing for Change, TakeAction Minnesota, ISAIAH and the Center for Popular Democracy.

The groups released their findings during a news conference at the State Office Building in St. Paul.

As the legislative session come down to the wire and a transportation budget still up in the air, the advocacy groups are urging law makers to approve a bill that would not cut service but allow Metro Transit to move forward with its Service Improvement Plan. That plan calls for an expansion of service that would institute Arterial Bus Rapid Transit, which would speed up service on local urban routes by as much as 30 percent among other things, the report said.

A proposal passed by the Minnesota House would force Metro Transit to reduce regular bus service by at least 17 percent. The fate of that proposal will be decided in the overall transportation spending bill hashed out by the House, Senate and Gov. Mark Dayton

"These improvements can only happen with enough funding. If transit funding is cut, the time penalty is certain to worsen," the report said. "Funding cuts proposed by House Republicans will result in lost service—longer waits, more delays, longer travel times, and more crowded buses and trains."

About 5 percent of whites and Minnesotans of Asian descent commute by public transit, 8 percent of Latinos, 10 percent of Blacks, and 29 percent of American Indians commute to work on public transit.

 

Source: Star Tribune

America’s biggest corporations are quietly boosting Trump’s hate agenda...

Read full article here.

Ana Maria Archila had never told her father that she was sexually abused as a child.

But after she confronted a U.S. senator about President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee and the video started going viral, she thought it was time to share her story.

“I always carried the fear that my parents would feel that they had failed in taking care of me if I told them,” Archila said Friday night in a phone interview with The Washington Post.

Read the full article here.