WINTER HAVEN, Fla. – Deric Feacher had a very worthwhile dream.

He wanted to establish a charter school in his hometown that specialized in helping disadvantaged and at-risk students earn their high school diplomas.

So he did what Florida law required. He took his proposal for the new charter school to the Polk County School Board’s Charter Review Committee, two different times. And twice he came away without permission to open his school, according to the Sunshine State News.

What was the committee’s hang-up? Were members afraid that Feacher would establish a bad school? Do they have a problem with the idea of creating a special school for children who are struggling in traditional schools?

It was nothing like that. The board members were just worried about losing money.

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COLUMBIA, S.C. – It seems that most states are looking to reform their K-12 public education system, either out of necessity – lack of money, low student achievement – or on the principle that families should have the right to choose their child’s education.

South Carolina is no different. During the current legislative session, state lawmakers are expected to consider a number of education reforms, including the possibility of increasing the number of charter schools in the state, linking teacher pay to student learning, and giving principals the power to fire ineffective teachers.

What distinguishes the Palmetto State’s K-12 reform debate from all the others is that it’s being led by an outspoken, retired Army brigadier general and former college president who is eager to take on the “liberal education establishment.”

State Superintendent of Education Mick Zais, a Republican, won election in 2010 by a huge margin of 108,000 votes. He has been in office for just over a year, but he has rankled lawmakers of both political parties by refusing to accept federal education dollars from President Obama’s Race to the Top initiative that gives states money in exchange for approved school reforms.

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CHESTER, Pa. – Three thousand students at Pennsylvania’s largest charter school face the imminent risk of having their school year cancelled in the coming days or weeks, and seeing their school “stop operations” entirely due to a lack of funds.

That grim reality is a direct result of decisions by officials in the nearby Chester Upland School District to keep state funds legally owed to the Chester Community Charter School, and to use them instead to bail the district out of its “self-inflicted budgetary crisis.”

That’s according to a legal brief filed by attorneys representing the Chester Community Charter School in response to last month’s judicial ruling that gave the Chester Upland School District a $3.2 million state bailout, and left the charter school holding almost $7 million in I.O.U. notes.

Attorneys for the Chester Community Charter School (CCCS) say the school faces a very real risk of shutting down because it cannot pay its bills.

As a result, it is “extremely likely that Chester Community Charter will have to stop operations, turning in excess of 3,000 students, nearly 700 with disabilities, out on the streets in the middle of the school year.”

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PITTSBURGH – Conventional wisdom says that allowing charter schools to compete with traditional schools for students and resources will result in the destruction of public education.

Those assumptions are being proven wrong by the renaissance underway in Pittsburgh Public Schools, caused – in part – by the district’s 31 area charter school competitors. Instead of being the bane of PPS’s existence, the charter schools are spurring the district into becoming leaner, more efficient and, ultimately, more effective for students.

Pittsburgh school officials understand that the “landscape has changed and that we need to be more competitive in the new world,” Lisa Fischetti, chief of staff and external affairs for Pittsburgh Public Schools, wrote in an email to EAG.

“ … [T]he increasing array of other educational options (e.g. charter schools, cyber charter schools, and potentially vouchers) did help to move the needle in terms of our culture shift.”

Part of PPS’ “culture shift” involves cutting over $40 million from its annual budget, a process that started last summer when the district cut 217 office positions and furloughed 54 teachers and paraprofessionals. In March, the district expects to announce that 398 teachers will not be returning for the 2012-13 school year.

Normally, when a school district announces mass layoffs, it is followed by charges that lawmakers are not “investing” enough in public education and that the apocalypse is at hand.

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MINNESOTA — Charter schools are popping up all across the nation, with 41 states offering families access to the alternative public schools.

Because the large majority of charter schools are not unionized, they can focus solely on serving students instead of pacifying the financial demands of school employee unions.

The unions know they cannot stop the spread of charter schools, so they have decided to take them over.

Late last year, the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers decided to authorize its own charter schools. An email written by MFT President Lynn Nordgren and posted on Eduwonk.com explains the union’s decision.

“ … [C]harter schools are not going away despite 20 years of protesting,” Nordgren writes. “Because of this, it is time to figure out how to… stop the de-professionalization of teaching, the bleeding out of our unions and the miseducation of too many students… It is time to ‘get in the game’ and make it ours.” (more…)

Labor unions are very powerful in Michigan, and the Michigan Education Association may be the strongest of them all.

That explains why the number of charter schools in Michigan has remained capped at a frustrating 150 for nearly two decades.

But that finally changed last week, when Gov. Rick Snyder signed a bill that will increase the cap to 300 charter schools in 2012, 500 in 2014 and eliminate limits altogether starting in 2015. That means school choice is on the march in Michigan, and traditional public schools will face increased pressure to measure up or lose thousands of students and millions of dollars of state funding.

The new law is a major defeat for the MEA and many public school organizations, who bitterly opposed the idea of increased competition.

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FORT WAYNE, Ind. – Board members at Fort Wayne Community Schools have found a crafty way of preventing charter schools from moving in on their territory, despite new laws designed to help the schools acquire underutilized public school buildings.

They voted to simply transfer the title of their closed elementary school, Pleasant Center, to the Fort Wayne Allen County Airport Authority, which is expected to vote on a resolution to acquire the school building next week.

Unfortunately, it’s the area’s low-income students and their parents who will ultimately pay the price.

Last month, officials at Timothy L. Johnson Academy – a charter school that serves primarily low-income students in southeast Fort Wayne – expressed interest to FWCS officials in moving to Pleasant Center under new laws that allow charters to lease or buy underutilized public school buildings for $1.

Johnson Academy currently operates out of a church and another former school downtown, but enrollment has continued to increase and school officials are looking for room to grow.

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OMAHA, Neb. – An annual poll regarding the U.S. public education system shows that teachers’ unions are losing support among Americans, while the percentage of people that support school reform has reached a record high.

The results underscore the growing momentum behind efforts to expand school choice programs, improve the quality of instruction, and inject accountability into teacher evaluation and compensation.

The 43rd annual Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup Poll of the Public’s Attitudes toward the Public Schools is a fair measure of public opinion, experts agree, with the exception of a poorly framed question on school vouchers which produced questionable results.

Union Power

The poll results show that nearly half of the 1,000 American adults polled about the influence of unionism in schools believe it is hurting public education.

“In 1976, the PDK/Gallup Poll asked Americans if teacher unionization helped, hurt, or made no difference in the quality of public school education in the United States. Back then, only one in four Americans believed teacher unions helped, but a relatively large number (13%) were undecided,” according to the report.

“Today, one in four Americans still believe teachers unions help, but almost one of two Americans believes that teacher unions hurt public schools.”

In other words, the undecided have decided that unions are a toxic influence on public schools. A total of 47 percent of those polled said teachers unions have hurt schools. (more…)

“[Teaching] is the only workplace, the only occupation, where by and large you are not paid, promoted, recognized, measured in any way having to do with your performance, only having to do with how long you’ve been breathing,” says journalist and media entrepreneur Steven Brill.

His new book, Class Warfare, chronicles the rise of a reform movement that’s bringing a measure of accountability and choice to public schools. The book grew out of Brill’s widely read 2009 New Yorker piece about the “rubber room,” a holding pen for New York City teachers who couldn’t be fired after they were removed from their classrooms for poor performance.

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When Deric Feacher left Winter Haven, Fla. in 1995 to study at Bethune-Cookman College, he never imagined that he’d end up walking in Mary McLeod Bethune’s footsteps . . . back in his own hometown. Yet, this fall, Feacher is helping launch a new charter school in Winter Haven that has a lot in common with the Daytona Educational and Industrial Training School for Negro Girls that Bethune started in 1904.

Like Bethune’s academy, New Beginnings High School targets a disadvantaged student population often left behind by the conventional school system. It seeks to help at-risk students acquire both higher learning and practical job skills. It tries to cultivate in its students a determination to overcome all obstacles, even if that means putting in an extra-long day.

And, sadly, it too has had to contend with naysayers.

Twice New Beginnings’ application was considered by the Polk County School Board’s Charter Review Committee. And twice the committee voted to deny New Beginnings’ application.

Apparently, some of the review committee’s unease stemmed from a concern about whether the charter school would reduce the “regular” school district’s student population (and its corresponding state funding). For example, in its response to New Beginnings’ application, the review committee asked:

• “Is the proposed school planning to recruit students who are currently in traditional PCSB schools?”; and
• “What % of the charter school’s total population is projected to come from currently enrolled students?”

While it is hard to imagine that these two questions would rank high on prospective parents’ list of concerns, Feacher and his colleagues painstakingly responded to these and other inquiries. In time, they managed to convince the Polk County School Board to overrule the charter school review committee and approve New Beginnings High’s application.

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Parents in Wisconsin are voting with their feet. Or at least their kids’ feet.

More than 260,000 Wisconsin K-12 students exercise some form of educational choice, according to a new study by the John K. MacIver Institute for Public Policy.

Choice in education is not the exception, it is the norm in Wisconsin,. Our MacIver Educational Choice Census shows that parents across Wisconsin embrace alternatives to the public school that bureaucrats dictate upon them based solely on where they live.

The MacIver Educational Choice Census reveals that 261,301 Wisconsin school children are educated in a place other than their traditional, geographically-assigned public school. This includes private schools, choice schools, virtual schools and other public charter schools, those who are homeschooled and those who participate in the state’s cumbersome and narrow open enrollment window. That figure is up 17.7 percent from the 222,086 children from the last MacIver census.

Statewide, more than 25 percent of students exercised choice, and in Milwaukee, almost four out of every five students exercised some form of choice over where they’ll attend school. That’s right. Nearly eighty percent.

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On July 30th, 2011, teachers, parents and advocates such as actor Matt Damon, author Jonathan Kozol, and historian Diane Ravitch gathered for the Save Our Schools Rally outside the White House.

The purpose of the event: “To put the public back in public schools.”

Reason.tv was on hand to talk tenure, the role of money in education, and whether parents should have the right to choose where their kids go to school.

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New York City families and school choice advocates were handed a major victory late Thursday evening when a Manhattan Supreme Court judge ruled that 22 failing public schools must close and 15 charter schools must be allowed to share space in public school buildings.

The ruling gives hope to many New York City families eager to see their children receive a quality education. The NAACP and the teacher unions so despise non-unionized charter schools that the groups were willing to see students remain trapped in ineffective schools for selfish political and financial reasons.

Thursday’s ruling corrects that injustice.

Education Action Group believes that all parents should have the right to choose where their children attend school. Each child deserves access to an effective educational experience that will prepare them for life.

The state Supreme Court has previously ruled that the New York Constitution requires that students receive a “sound, basic education.”  There is nothing that says that education must occur in a traditional government-run school.

That principle was indirectly affirmed again last night by the Manhattan Supreme Court judge’s ruling.

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From The Daily Caller:

Minority parents in New York have a message for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the United Federation of Teachers (UFT): you are hurting our children.

In New York Monday, charter school parents staged another of several rallies to voice opposition to a lawsuit brought by the UFT and NAACP against the New York City Department of Education. If the organizations are successful with their suit, it would prevent enrollment or re-enrollment in 17 charter schools and stop the closure of 22 public schools.

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Many civil rights groups around the nation have strongly supported school choice initiatives, mainly out of concern for inner-city children who have traditionally been stuck in sub-par schools.

Civil rights leaders understand that education is the key to escaping the cycle of poverty that’s prevalent in many inner-city neighborhoods. Kids trapped in poorly run, dangerous schools often don’t receive the instruction required to move on to  college or a decent job.

Those children need quality options like charter schools, or government vouchers to pay tuition at private schools, if they are going to have a chance to succeed. Most civil rights leaders understand that concept and want to help children seek quality education beyond their geographic school district boundaries.

So why isn’t the NAACP on board?

That organization has joined New York City’s United Federation of Teachers in filing a lawsuit that would prevent the closure of approximately two dozen failing schools, prevent several dozen charter schools from sharing space in public school buildings, and prevent the opening of at least two new charter schools.

In other words, the NAACP is suing to keep a lot of black kids trapped in really bad schools, with no options for escape.

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Now we know why unionists were fighting so hard for a federal “card check” law.  Organizers can unionize private and public employees, forcing them to pay hundreds in union dues, before they even know anything about it.

That’s the situation at the Cape Cod Lighthouse Charter School in Orleans, Massachusetts.

Last week news broke that the reputable charter school was the second in Massachusetts to be organized by the American Federation of Teachers.

Various sources indicated that the unionization effort was somewhat less than forthright. Several teachers complained that they were never informed about the process and were never asked to vote on the issue.

“The union effort was coordinated by group of teachers and staff that did not include all employees,” one teacher wrote. “In fact, a number of employees were not approached at all and found out, quite by accident, that a union had been formed without our input.

“A full vote of the faculty and staff was never taken and plans to unionize went ahead, anyway.”

Unionization without a vote of the staff? That sounds like the nasty little practice of “card check,” which allows pro-union employees to gang up on co-workers and pressure them to sign a union membership card. Once 50 percent of them do so, the union is automatically certified.

There are no private ballots involved in the process. Those who refuse to sign are exposed to all the pressure and intimidation that the union can muster. Under those conditions, it probably doesn’t take very long to gain 50 percent approval.

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During a recent television appearance, former Vermont Gov. and Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean said “charter schools are the future” and suggested that the charter school/teacher union “battle is coming to an end.”

Yeah, right. Or, in Howard Dean’s language:  YYYEEEAARRRR, right!

The “battle” may be over, but the teacher unions’ desire to co-opt (and ultimately destroy) charter schools remains.  The tactics have changed.  Instead of the Gatling-gun approach, they’re now resorting to the Boa Constrictor method.

In fact, the unions have been surprisingly candid about their new strategy of infiltration and suffocation.

United Federation of Teachers Vice President Leo Casey considers charter schools competition that will cost teaching jobs in traditional public schools. His goal is to organize the teachers so public support for charters will drop off. He said this at the recent socialist Left Forum:

“If we do not figure out how to organize charter schools and if we are not successful in doing that, we will end up in the same place as the auto workers. So there is no more key question before us as a union and a broader labor movement with regard to education than how we approach charter schools and our ability to organize them.”

This reinforces something Detroit Federation of Teachers President Keith Johnson wrote a year ago:

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Last week, I told you about an Indiana teacher who compared the state’s new education reform initiatives to the Holocaust.

My organization, the Education Action Group, responded to this teacher’s email, and told him in no uncertain terms that he was a “dope” for comparing charter schools and vouchers to the Nazi ovens and gas chambers.

Charter schools and vouchers equal this? Yes, says Indiana teacher.

That teacher wrote back to defended his Holocaust comparison this way:

“The reason that this is a holocaust is that it is attacking innocent and in this case defenseless people just because someone or some group can push their own agenda through the political system and those most affected by it cannot do anything about it.  I really do not like to reflect upon the atrocities that were done to my family members.  However, I must admit that extermination is finite, whereby, suppressing a generation that will be generational does not help them or any of us. (emphasis added)

“My true feelings are that I want the best for the children I teach, my own children and all of the children not only of Indiana but of the world.  The actions of the governor are highly offensive to me.  I have always taken my job seriously and aforementioned want the best for them.  As a lifetime Republican, I am offended and embarrassed by this last political session.  Obviously, someone must like what is happening.  I have talked to several people that mirror my feelings that they will really scrutinize who they will vote for in the future.

“Now that you have responded to my e-mail and insulted me and I hope that you feel better for that. Perhaps now you can put aside our differences and stop the mud slinging….”

This teacher (who identifies himself as an agriscience and agribusiness instructor, a Future Farmers of America advisor, and an assistant track and field coach) has clarified his position on why Gov. Mitch Daniels is perpetuating a “holocaust” over in Indiana, and it is this: the Holocaust was bad, but the damage was limited, whereas giving kids vouchers will cause generational damage.

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Upon learning that average per pupil spending in the public education system is $9,000, recent Rasmussen poll takers overwhelming stated their dissatisfaction with the return on their investment.

It’s hard to blame them.  Per pupil spending on education has tripled since the 1960s and increased 138 percent since 1985, but test scores and academic achievements remain stagnant and unchanged.

Noticing this trend, taxpayers and parents have found other options—an alternative to the status quo.  Americans are used to variety and choice and thought the education system should offer nothing less.

“In our society choice is something we’ve all been used to,” says Jeff Sands, senior manager of school development for Northeastern and Central California for the California Charter Schools Association.  “Now you can find schools that fit your needs and styles.”

The charter school movement has grown to 4,600 schools serving more than 1.4 million students nationally.

Charter schools have been a welcomed change for taxpayers, parents, students and those states and local governments who have adopted them.

What makes charter school different than public schools?

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One of the things I’ve always liked about charter schools is they aren’t bound by onerous labor agreements that hamper innovation.  Traditional public schools get boxed in with union contracts that literally stipulate when a teacher arrives in the morning and when he or she must depart.  And that’s just the beginning of union-imposed regulations.

In charter schools, the interest of the students comes first, so adults oftentimes find themselves going above and beyond to ensure that students succeed.  In the documentary “Kids Aren’t Cars,” the story was told of Tindley Accelerated School in Indianapolis.  The principal said his teachers stay late and work Saturdays if necessary because they do not accept failure.

That’s why it is disturbing to watch labor unions organize charter school after charter school, with little being done about it.  Their intent is clear.  Consider what United Federation of Teachers Vice President Leo Casey said at the recent socialist Left Forum, courtesy of EAGtv:

“If we do not figure out how to organize charter schools and if we are not successful in doing that, we will end up in the same place as the auto workers. So there is no more key question before us as a union and a broader labor movement with regard to education than how we approach charter schools and our ability to organize them.”

What he’s saying is that the United Auto Workers unionized Ford, General Motors and Chrysler and ignored foreign competitors.  As foreign market shares grew, the UAW’s membership rolls suffered.  Casey’s envisioning a similar scenario with school employee unions.

He doesn’t care if charter schools benefit students. He just knows that they hurt his union, so they must be changed as soon as possible.

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