Baker said his proposal will give charter schools better flexibility to educate English language learners and students with disabilities, but did not offer specific policy recommendations in his statement.
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“The time is already long past to address this issue”, Baker said. “And they’d probably be right”, Baker added.
Walsh criticized the acrimony that surrounds the debate between charter school and public school advocates.
They also say charter schools will to find ways to underserve those with the most needs and then use inflated claims of success to grab an ever-larger share of public education funding.
“I’m amazed that the governor could sit here or stand here and push for legislation that is not consistent with what his mandate is as governor of all the people”, said Mel King, a former state representative. “Or brand new charters that don’t have grades at all?”
Other bills heard by the committee on Tuesday would to create a moratorium on new charter schools, improve state reimbursements for charter schools, and ensure “charter school transparency and public accountability”.
Typically founded by nonprofits and members of the community, charter schools often concentrate education around one subject. Peggy Lehner, R-Kettering, chair of the Senate Education Committee, characterized the system as “a shell game” and said it was “pretty clear that (charter students) are getting local dollars”.
“Urban sending districts and urban charters enroll similarly high percentages of low income students”.
“I know many are calling for the cap to be raised even higher or removed completely”, Walsh said. But more important than rankings, charter schools in Louisiana have become a way to empower parents with educational choices and increase their engagement with the public education system in their communities. Eileen Sigmund, president and CEO of the nonprofit Arizona Charter Schools Association, said this point is oversimplified. A new report claims more than $200 million in fraud and wasted taxpayer funds has been lost to the charter school sector (“The Tip of the Iceberg: Charter School Vulnerabilities To Waste, Fraud, And Abuse” by Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools and the Center for Popular Democracy). The state has approved 106 of the 421 charter applications filed since 1994, 81 of which are still operating, according to Department of Elementary and Secondary Education data.
Both sides are squaring off Tuesday during a committee hearing on 34 bills related to charter schools.
Baker says his charter school proposal will effect charter school growth in districts now performing in the bottom 25 percent statewide. Walsh proposed a funding system that he said would be less of a drain on district budgets in cities like Boston, which he said has been allotted 36 percent of new charter school seats since 2011 despite having just 7 percent of the state’s total school enrollment. “But the goal of lifting the cap is not to fuel a rapid seat expansion”. “I am convinced that such dramatic changes would be reckless under the current funding mechanism and unwise under any circumstances”. In math and reading, researchers found that charter school students perform better in the subjects compared to those in traditional public schools.
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All families should have access to a great school that works for their children, and we shouldn’t accept anything less than that as our vision for the future of public education in Louisiana.
