Local taxpayers say yes to charter schools

yes Adam Emerson / November 15, 2012

Charter schools in at least six cities and counties will benefit from local bonds and levies that voters approved on Election Day. Collectively, that means more than $500 million[1] of local tax dollars over the next several years for charter-school facility or operating costs in Cleveland; San Diego; St. Paul, Minnesota; and Metropolitan Denver (including school districts in Denver proper, Aurora, and Jefferson County). Why the sudden generosity in places that (with the exception of Denver) historically have barely tolerated charters, if that? Some charter leaders say school systems might have realized that it’s become harder to ask parents to pay higher taxes only for district schools when so many more of them are choosing charter schools for their children. Indeed, voters in these regions have joined a handful of other cities that, over the past few years, have set aside local dollars for charters by ballot initiative, when most districts and state legislatures still refuse to do so. Of course, voters might have never seen these ballot questions had it not been for legislators (like those in Colorado) who rewrote laws a few years ago, forcing districts to “invite” charters to discuss the needs of all public schools before requesting bonds or levies. But whatever the reason, the response from voters is encouraging: A whopping $350 million share of a $2.8 billion bond in San Diego will aid charter-school facility needs over the next

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Local taxpayers say yes to charter schools

Finally, charter schools in Washington

yes Adam Emerson / November 13, 2012

Six days passed after Election Day before news outlets were comfortable reporting that Washington would be the 42nd state to allow charter schools. But a victory is a victory: 50.81 percent voters in the Evergreen State finally said yes to charter schools, after having said no three times before. What’s more, the measure succeeded in spite of the fact that the state’s largest county, which includes Seattle, rejected the initiative 52-48 percent. With such a polarized electorate, advocates and charter operators will have plenty of work ahead to assure voters—especially those in Seattle—that the forty schools they’re empowered to open over the next five years will add quality, innovation, and variety to a public-education landscape that has done little to accommodate a multiplicity of approaches. Given the fact that opponents to the initiative still hadn’t conceded defeat as of Monday night (there were still 237,000 votes to count statewide), and given the fact that supporters of the initiative outspent opponents by $10 million, that job won’t be easy.

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Finally, charter schools in Washington

Sign up for the Charters and Choice Digest

yes Adam Emerson / November 12, 2012

For those who can’t get enough of all things charters and choice, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute has assembled the best commentary and analyses from Fordham’s Choice Words blog, as well as select items from Fordham’s popular (and sometimes irreverent) Education Gadfly Weekly, into a single monthly e-mail digest. The Charters & Choice Digest will guide readers through the triumphs, the quarrels, and the political foibles that accompany the growth of school choice and charter schools—and no cows will ever be sacred. Consider the contents of the inaugural issue: Election Day and the prospects of charter schools on both coasts of the country; Andy Smarick on the future of the urban school system; a charter school scandal and its implications for authorizers; and an exploration of how even “No Excuses” charters can improve. There will be essays, reviews of notable books and papers, and must-read stories on school choice nationwide. To sign up for the newsletter, visit here or send an e-mail to editor Adam Emerson, the director of the Fordham Institute’s program on parental choice.

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Sign up for the Charters and Choice Digest

Don’t claim victory in Michigan yet

yes Adam Emerson / November 9, 2012

Education reformers might be tempted to think they can claim victory in Michigan because voters overwhelmingly rejected a push from the teacher unions and others to engrave collective bargaining in the state constitution. Surely, the unions overreached here, but they won elsewhere on Election Day in the Wolverine State.

Education reform in Michigan suffered a crucial setback on Tuesday.

Or, more specifically, in Detroit, Highland Park, and Muskegon Heights—all of them school districts that have become educational wastelands and where the state had installed emergency managers to take control and (more importantly) to tear up union contracts to get the job done. In Highland Park and Muskegon Heights, that meant converting the school districts into charter-school districts. In Detroit, it meant keeping power out of the hands of a school board that one newspaper columnist said was “sauced on power and staggering with incompetence.”

This week, 53 percent of the state’s voters repealed the emergency-manager law, a victory for public-employee unions (teachers included, of course) that had spent the summer gathering signatures to put the question on the ballot. And that may unravel the boldest measures undertaken by these managers.

Detroit’s emergency chief, Roy Roberts, technically maintains control over the district’s budget, but he wrote to Michigan Governor Rick Snyder this week indicating that he may soon step down due to the response of voters, despite the fact that he feared progress in Detroit Public Schools would be “virtually impossible”

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Don’t claim victory in Michigan yet