While the profiteers and privatizers threaten, demean, and berate students and teachers for more accountability, the Vampire Squid unleashed by billionaires has its blood funnel deep into the public jugular of Philadelphia.
As public schools re-use copy paper and shutter libraries and fire counselors, the billionaires and hedge funders walk away with state government and handsome profits. When will the fascist Governor Corbett fire this auditor, who has the audacity to report on the rape and pillage going on in Pennsylvania at the expense of our most vulnerable children?
MARTHA WOODALL, INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
Oversight
of charter schools in Pennsylvania is "a mess," state Auditor General
Eugene DePasquale has concluded, based on a series of public meetings across
the commonwealth.
To
help clean it up, DePasquale called Monday for creating an independent charter
oversight board, restoring charter reimbursements for school districts, and
requiring the state to pick up the tab for cyber charter schools.
DePasquale,
a Democrat, said taxpayer-funded charter schools, which enroll 120,000 students
across the state, are here to stay. Many are effective, he said, but an
overhaul of the 1997 state law that authorized them is long overdue.
DePasquale's
recommendations were contained in a report he released Monday that drew on
remarks from five recent public meetings across the state on the accountability
and effectiveness of charters.
During
a conference call with reporters, he said charter school operators and critics
had told him the lack of clear direction and oversight by the state caused
problems for charters and districts.
"In
fact," he said, "several participants in the public meetings compared
the current situation to the wild, wild west."
An
independent statewide charter oversight board would provide needed clarity and
direction, DePasquale said.
The
board could be funded, in part, from the money the Education Department now
spends on its charter office.
"With
more than $1 billion being spent on charter schools every year," according
to the report, "improved oversight is imperative."
The
board would settle disputes between charter schools and districts, enforce
regulations, develop a streamlined appeals process, and verify data that
charter schools include in annual reports filed with the state.
Now,
DePasquale said, there is little evidence that anyone reviews the reports.
Timothy
Eller, an Education Department spokesman, said officials were reviewing the
report.
Robert
Fayfich, executive director of the Pennsylvania Coalition of Public Charter
Schools, said his organization was interested in learning more about several of
DePasquale's proposals, including the oversight board.
"It's
intriguing in concept, but the devil is in the details," he said.
"We'd like to know more."
Fayfich
said DePasquale "did a good job of listening to people on all sides of the
issues."
Districts
have responsibility for authorizing and overseeing charter schools within their
boundaries, except for cyber charter schools, which are overseen by the
Education Department.
The
state law, DePasquale said, "punts a lot of this to the local school
districts, but does not give them any tools to deal with this," except for
when the schools are up for renewal after five years.
He
said all districts should be given the same power as the Philadelphia School
Reform Commission and be permitted to award one-year renewals to schools facing
allegations of ethical, financial, and academic problems.
Successful
charter schools, he added, should be eligible to be renewed for seven years.
DePasquale
said complaints about oversight and confusion about the law had existed for
years but had been exacerbated by recent cuts in state funding for schools. In
particular, he cited the 2011 elimination of a state program that reimbursed
districts for part of their charter school costs.
"Today,
many school districts and charter schools are combatants fighting for students
and for public dollars," the auditor general wrote.
Philadelphia,
which has more than half the state's 174 charter schools, lost more than $100
million in reimbursements in 2011-12 alone.
DePasquale
also urged the state to shift the burden of paying for students enrolled at
cyber schools from the districts where they live to the state. Now districts
must pay cyber schools but have no control over them.
State
Rep. James Roebuck (D., Phila.), cochairman of the Education Committee, praised
DePasquale's report.
"It's
valuable to have independent confirmation of many of the problems and solutions
I have identified," said Roebuck, who has introduced legislation to revamp
the charter law.
DePasquale
said he hoped the report would serve as a catalyst and a blueprint for the
first major revision of the 17-year-old law.
Copies
were sent to every member of the state legislature, the governor, the
Department of Education, charter school leaders, school boards, and
superintendents.
"I
have no way to enforce this happening," DePasquale told reporters.
"If I did, I would decree it right now."
No comments:
Post a Comment