Tag Archives: Topic: Charter Schools

Education News: A bill sponsored by California Assemblyman Tony Mendoza that makes it easier for school districts to block charter schools has passed through the Assembly.

NOLA.com: Although charter schools continue to dwarf vouchers in terms of overall growth, voucher programs have rebounded on the national political and educational scene in the past year. In 2011, more than 30 states introduced bills that would use taxpayer dollars to send children to privately run schools, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. That’s up more than 300% from the previous year, when only nine voucher bills were introduced.

Mcall.com: Preliminary state audit report finds Pocono Mountain Charter School had ‘improper entanglements’ with Tobyhanna church.

ADF Attorney Dave Cortman on Koinonia (KPXQ AM 1360) with Tom Brown: The Idaho charter challenge at the Supreme Court. | MP3 audio 12:19 mins

One News Now: “The mere fact that a classical text is religious does not mean it has no educational value,” contends ADF attorney David Cortman. “In fact, the Supreme Court itself has clearly acknowledged this, and that’s why it should hear the case.” . . . “It’s ridiculous that a historical, religious text that has been studied as part of Western civilization for centuries is somehow automatically off-limits,” the attorney argues. “When government officials ban the objective study of all religious texts, including the most important literary works of all times, it only contributes to the further dumbing down of government-run education.”

Education News: Parent organizers from San Diego and Lynwood on Wednesday rallied against what they called inaccurate and misleading union dispatches to teachers on the controversial parent trigger law, which allows parents at low-performing schools to force their campus to convert to a charter and hire new teachers, or change its administration.

Religion Clause: The Orange County Register last month, in an editorial, reported on a lawsuit filed on Dec. 9 against the Compton (CA Unified School District challenging its two denials of a charter school application filed by a Christian minister.

Idaho Press-Tribune (12/29): It’s generally accepted that federal law trumps state law. So the Alliance Defense Fund, which has taken up the case on behalf of NCA, has legitimate reason to believe it has a valid argument. But if the U.S. Supreme Court doesn’t agree to hear the case, it doesn’t matter how strong it is. The odds aren’t very good. But it would benefit Idaho greatly if it does happen.

Religion Clause Blog: Alliance Defense Fund announced yesterday that it has filed a petition for certiorari (full text) with the Supreme Court in Napa Classical Academy v. Goesling

Idaho Press-Tribune: Alliance Defense Fund attorneys filed a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court Wednesday that asks the court to weigh in on the now-defunct Nampa Classical Academy’s lawsuit against Idaho state officials for prohibiting the use of the Bible in the school’s curriculum.

Idaho Press-Tribune (AP): “If the commission’s misinterpretation of state law is allowed to stand, all Idaho public school and university students will be subject to the ban,” the Alliance Defense Fund said in a statement issued Wednesday.

ADF seeks review of 9th Circuit ruling that upheld ban on all religious, Western Civ. texts from objective study in every public school, university

Education News: Hawaii’s Charter School Review Panel has “misinterpreted state law and minimized its role in the system’s accountability structure”, says an audit of the state’s charter school system, writes Katherine Poythress at Honolulu Civil Beat.

Wisconsin State Journal: First it was the ACLU, then the unions. Now the Madison-based Freedom from Religion Foundation is joining the list of organizations speaking out against Madison Preparatory Academy.

Freedom from Religion Foundation: A new Madison, Wis., public charter school set to operate in a former church has drawn the attention of the Freedom From Religion Foundation. FFRF is also asking for a review of why the property has maintained tax-exempt status while it’s been vacant and not being used for worship services.

San Jose Mercury News: An appellate court this week refused to hear the Los Altos School District’s case against Bullis Charter School, setting up either a possible showdown in the California Supreme Court or an end to the long-running legal dispute. For Bullis officials, Monday’s court outcome was an affirmation that the school district had discriminated against it by failing to provide adequate facilities as required by state law.

The Republic (AP): Harris, R-West Fork, has said he thought religious displays are permitted if paid for with private money. Harris said he met Tuesday with a lawyer from the Arizona-based Alliance Defense Fund, which works to preserve religious freedom. The attorney is planning to meet with state officials, Harris said

Education News: The passed six bills Thursday that give parents more options for their children’s education, including one that lifts restrictions on the number of cyber charter schools that can open and the number of students that can enroll in them.

The Boston Globe: Federal civil rights attorneys have launched an investigation into whether the state is discriminating against students with limited English fluency by allegedly failing to ensure that new charter schools are equipped to educate the students.

MiamiHerald.com: The school district is withholding more than $185,000 from the Academy of Arts & Minds charter school in Coconut Grove because the school has failed to provide some services for children with special needs — a violation of state and federal law. Last month, the school, which has 460 students, was also slapped for illegally charging fees to students for basic classes.

Kare11.com: The ACLU of Minnesota released hundreds of documents Monday from its ongoing lawsuit against an Inver Grove Heights charter school, based on the legal claim that school used taxpayer money to promote Islam.

News: Special Interests Sue to Remove Arizona Children with Special Needs From Private Schools: The Arizona Education Association (AEA) and the Arizona School Boards Association (ASBA) today filed yet another lawsuit to remove children with special needs from the private schools of their parents’ choice.

ADF Attorney Dave Cortman appeared on The Real Side with Joe Messina to discuss the Nampa Classical Academy litigation. | MP3 audio 12:48 mins

ADF Attorney Matt Sharp on Drive Time with the Bill Bunkley to discuss the Nampa Classical Academy case. | MP3 audio 11:47 mins

Boise Weekly: The article mentions that Moffett is suing the board over the revocation of the charter. His lawyer is David Cortman of the Alliance Defense Fund, a group that defends so-called “Christian” causes “One of our claims in the case is, the closing down of the school, under the alleged guise of financial reasons, is a reaction to the teaching of religious books,” said Cortman.

John Stossel at Townhall: Those kids attend one of those new charter schools. Charters let them escape the bureaucracy of regular schools, including, often, teachers union rules. These schools compete for kids because parents can always choose another school. That makes them better. Not every charter school is good, but the beauty of competition is that bad ones go out of business, while good ones expand.

Education News: The Chicken Licken child’s book depicts a fearful and ill-informed chick running around screaming hysterically, “the sky is falling, the sky is falling,” but discovers instead the sky is the limit. Similarly, teacher’s unions are attempting to create hysteria about Charter schools. Unions are ignoring key issues while blocking meaningful education reform.

Bluegrass Policy Blog: : Folks in Tennessee are not happy with the restrictive way they set up approval authority for their charter schools. Right now, the only approval authority is the local school board in each district. This new Commercial Appeal (Memphis) article says that is stifling the creation of more of these dynamic, and successful, public schools. Basically, local school boards often act to preserve their business as usual turf instead of doing what is best for students.

LaTimes.com: The state charter school association has received a $15-million grant from the Walton Family Foundation to add 20,000 more charter school students in Los Angeles and 100,000 statewide.

Citydesk: But a senior legal counsel with the Alliance Defense Fund told the Idaho Press Tribune that his group is prepared to take their case to the Supreme Court. David Cortman said the Ninth Circuit “ignored the right of local school districts to choose their own texts and curriculum.” Ultimately Cortman said he’s prepared to file a petition to submit the case for review by the high court.

Idaho Press-Tribune: “In our opinion, the court failed to perform any meaningful analysis of any issue in the case, including the seminal one: whether there is any educational purpose to ban all religious documents from objective teaching …” Cortman said.
He said the court also ignored the right of local school districts to choose their own texts and curriculum.

The Morning Call: The U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia heard arguments Thursday on whether charter schools can sue their parent districts — a question Judge Marjorie O. Rendell called hugely important for the future of charter schools in Pennsylvania.

Religion Clause: Minnesota federal district court yesterday refused to issue a temporary restraining order or a preliminary injunction to allow the Tarek ibn Ziyad Acedmy to continue to operate after the July 1 expiration of the contract with its current sponsor.

Courthouse News Service: Judges Johnnie Rawlinson and William Fletcher seemed skeptical of Cortman’s First Amendment claims. “How do you have a First Amendment argument if, in fact, it’s the government’s speech that’s being regulated?” Rawlinson asked. Cortman replied that it was the speech of a local school district, but Rawlinson countered that the school has to comply with the governing body . . . Cortman claimed in his rebuttal that the Charter School Commission has no authority to impose the ban on religious works and only the State Board of Education can decide curriculum. He also claimed that the school was shut down in retaliation for opposing the book-ban policy.

OneNewsNow.com: . . . senior legal counsel David Cortman says the case will end up before the Supreme Court. “[The Ninth Circuit was] completely hostile to the argument. It didn’t seem to have too much of a problem with this broad-based censorship,” he accounts. “So it looks to me this is one of those cases that’s going to continue to climb the ladder.” . . . [more quotes by D. Cortman]

AJC.com: The Georgia Supreme Court on Monday declined to reconsider a recent decision that declared the state’s charter school law unconstitutional and which left an estimated 16,500 students wondering where they would be getting an education next school year.

Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty: The Christian Post reports on one side of the argument: “The government’s hyperactive censorship of classical religious texts severely limits the education of students by leaving them with an incomplete understanding of history and their heritage,” stated attorney David Cortman, a senior counsel with religious liberties law firm Alliance Defense Fund. Cortman is urging the court to consider the Bible’s historical and cultural presence in American history as well as a Supreme Court ruling protecting the religious book as an educational tool.

Christian Post: “The government’s hyperactive censorship of classical religious texts severely limits the education of students by leaving them with an incomplete understanding of history and their heritage,” stated attorney David Cortman, a senior counsel with religious liberties law firm Alliance Defense Fund.

ADF attorney available to media after 9th Circuit hears arguments regarding charter school blocked from using books deemed ‘religious’

AP: Agassi, who operates an award-winning charter school in Las Vegas, said Thursday the biggest impediment to charter school growth is finding adequate facilities to house students.

Today, a slim majority of Georgia’s Supreme Court ruled (in a 4 to 3 decision) that the law creating the Georgia Charter Schools Commission is unconstitutional. At stake in the ruling are no less than 16 charter schools serving approximately 15,000 children across the state.

LA Times: “A hasty legal maneuver by top Los Angeles school officials will not fend off a legal challenge of their decision to turn over low-performing Clay Middle School to a charter-school organization, The Times has learned.”

Michael Flaherty at the Wall Street Journal: Mr. Tulloss is the chairman of Parent Revolution, a grass-roots organization that has shocked the education establishment in California with a simple premise: Parents should have more say in the fate of their neighborhood schools. That’s because they are the one group in the education debate without a conflict of interest—their interests are entirely aligned with their children’s. Parent Revolution has made national news in its ongoing attempt to use California’s new “parent trigger” law, which allows parents to transform a failing school by, among other things, replacing it with a charter school.

TwinCities.com: A federal judge on Wednesday shot down a Twin Cities charter school’s bid to dismiss an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit claiming it promotes Islam, clearing the way for a summer trial.

Beacon Hill Institute via Insider Online: his study demonstrates that charter schools outperform non-charter public schools on the 8th and 10th grade Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) exams by statistically significant margins after controlling for socio-economic differences among the student populations. We offer several explanations to account for these findings, paramount among them being the freedom charter schools enjoy from bureaucratic restrictions. This freedom allows charter school teachers to innovate with methods denied to their non-charter counterparts.

SMH.com.au: “THE federal government will review a proposal to adopt a controversial school model in which privately run schools operate wholly on public funds.”

Pioneer Press: As they head to a summer trial, the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota and a metro-area charter school it accuses of promoting religion disagree whether a jury or judge should get the 2-year-old federal case. The ALCU wants a bench trial, in which a judge would decide whether the Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy blended public education and religion in violation of the constitution.

Education News: Niche charters in areas with well-performing public schools are taking heat from critics who say they’re unnecessary.

Jason L. Riley writes at the Wall Street Journal: But the real strength of the AFT, NEA and their state and local affiliates lies in their ability to obstruct. They have been particularly effective at blocking poor people from leaving bad public schools. They offer financial and logistical support to political candidates sympathetic to their agenda of curbing educational options, and they punish elected officials who don’t stay the course. Teachers unions agitate for laws and regulations that ban means-tested voucher programs or cap the number of charter schools that can open in a state. To protect jobs for their members, they fight to keep the worst instructors from being fired and the worst schools from closing. All the while, they insist that their interests are aligned with those of the kids.

Heritage Foundation: “What happens when a city buys the liberal dream hook, line and sinker? Just take a look at the City of Detroit. The once-great city lost 237,493 residents over the last decade according to the 2010 Census, bringing it to 713,777 – a population plunge of 25%. That’s its lowest population since 1910 . . . And the city’s big problem today is that its road forward is blocked by the very same political machine that helped deliver it to its state of ruin. Case in point: the state’s powerful teachers unions.”

WECT.com: “North Carolina lawmakers have taken another step toward ending the current limit of 100 charter schools.”

Charlotte Observer: “A rewritten proposal for eliminating the charter school cap would limit how quickly the state could add new schools and would no longer require that traditional schools hand over their booster club money to charters.”

Educationnews.org: “This article on the growing influence of Islam on American charter schools will appear in the forthcoming “Islam in Scholarship and Education” issue of Academic Questions.”

The American Spectator: “One would think that Alabama, a state in which teachers unions don’t have the power to force school districts into collective bargaining, would be a bastion of school reform. But within the past year or so, the National Education Association’s Cotton State affiliate has shown there’s more to wielding influence than sitting at negotiating tables.”

Herald Online: “Members of the S.C. House’s budget-writing committee voted Wednesday night to give the schools, organized under the state’s charter school district, $25million in state money in the budget year that starts July 1.”

LA Times: “Officials will recommend the rare closing of a Los Angeles charter school for poor academic performance, the L.A. Unified School District has confirmed.
Cornerstone Prep, an elementary school in Florence . . . ”

STL Today: “Groups representing teachers, administrators and school boards lined up today to oppose a bill that would allow charter schools to be established statewide.”

Tulsa World: A handful of bills making it easier to fire public school teachers and expanding the use of charter schools across the state cleared a Senate panel on Monday, despite concerns from some Democrats that the proposals amount to an “assault” on public education.

Boston Globe: “Massachusetts education commissioner Mitchell Chester today endorsed 17 out 23 applications to launch new charter schools, including 10 in Boston.”

Wyoming News: “A Senate committee decided Monday that local school districts should keep the authority to approve or deny charter school applications.”

Kansas City Star: “After a decade, many of Missouri’s charter schools are not doing much better than traditional public schools, a national watchdog group concluded. Two reasons: not getting their fair share of education money or enough monitoring, contends a report by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. Chronically low-performing charter schools, the report concluded, should be closed . . . ”

Bluegrass Policy Blog: “Legislators on both sides of the aisle, Dems as well as Republicans, in Indiana get it – charter schools work, and their state deserves more of them.”

Bloomberg: “A state appeals court on Wednesday will consider a charter school’s lawsuit arguing that its funding share should be calculated from a pie that includes Head Start and other early childhood education funds.”

Religion Clause Blog: “The Minneapolis Star Tribune yesterday reported that the settlement involves Islamic Relief paying the ACLU $267,500, and the state increasing its screening of charter schools to assure that they do not promote religion.”

Boston Globe: “It is a surge in growth unlike any we have ever seen,’’ said Paul Grogan, president of the Boston Foundation, a charitable organization that urged the state to let more charter schools open. “We have a very strong cadre of charter schools that are proven providers and ready to expand.’’

San Diego Union Tribune: “Six parents and their children are suing the Compton Unified School District, claiming district officials are violating their right to a quality education by allegedly trying to obstruct an effort to convert a failing elementary school to a charter school.”

Chicago Sun-Times: “The Chicago Board of Education on Wednesday approved charter school expansion for just under 6,000 students — providing an educational experience one parent said was as different from a traditional public school as ‘night and day.’”

Walter Russell Mead writing in The American Interest: “As the blue social model gradually falls apart and American society casts restlessly about for something to replace it, charter schools may be on the cutting edge of the social transformation about to take place . . . they are doing at least as well as the schools we have — and they are pointing the way to the kind of political and social transformation that can take us past the stagnant and dysfunctional world of Big Blue Bureaucracy into something more sustainable and more hopeful.”

Chicago Tribune: “Hundreds of charter school supporters and detractors are expected to attend a Chicago Public Schools board meeting Wednesday, hoping to influence a vote on whether to open more of the independently run public schools.”

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: “The voucher proposal, announced last week by state Sens. Jeffrey Piccola, R-Dauphin, and Anthony Williams, D-Philadelphia, would allow low-income students from ‘persistently poorly performing’ public schools to switch to other public or private schools — and receive taxpayer-funded vouchers to pay their tuition. Proposals in the 1990s had broader reach.”

Associated Press: “As cash-strapped school districts lay off teachers and close campuses, publicly funded charter schools are flourishing and altering the landscape of public education.”

Sacramento Bee: “Opposition is mounting against a proposal to create a network of charter schools in Sacramento County. Area school board members and union representatives say their concern is that local control is being thwarted by Margaret Fortune petitioning for 10 charter schools with the Sacramento County Office of Education and not individual school districts.”

NorthJersey.com: “The state on Tuesday approved 23 new charter schools, including a controversial Hebrew immersion school for children in Englewood and Teaneck, and a virtual high school for Paterson students.”

Sheboygan Press: “Sheboygan Area School District officials are putting the brakes, ever so slightly, on expanding the district’s charter school program amid concerns by some that they’re creating a two-tier educational system where more motivated and affluent families are fleeing neighborhood schools for programs that more closely fit their children’s needs.”

Bloomberg: “Daniels used about half of his 30-minute State of the State speech Tuesday night to promote his education proposals, including an expansion of charter schools, vouchers to help parents send their children to private schools and limits on teacher union contracts.”