School privatization agenda pushes forward, concerns grow

by Lindsay Wagner, NC Policy Watch, January 29, 2015.

Vouchers. Charter schools. Virtual charter schools. These are some of the leading examples of school choice – a catchy phrase referring to what others call education reform or, more simply put, school privatization –and the movement has most definitely made inroads in North Carolina.

Students can now use taxpayer dollars to attend private religious schools, there’s no longer a limit to the number of charter schools that can operate here, and, pretty soon, students can go to class without leaving their homes thanks to a virtual charter school pilot program lawmakers enacted last year.

Advocates for school choice gathered in Raleigh at a breakfast meeting on Wednesday to celebrate National School Choice Week, touting these programs and calling for their continued expansion.

As the 2015 legislative session kicks off, let’s take a look at where some elements of the school choice agenda stand and what we can expect in the near term.

School vouchers

Lawmakers enacted the Opportunity Scholarship program back in 2013, which kicked off last fall offering $4,200 vouchers to students who want to leave the public school system and attend private schools – religious or not.

The program has not been without its difficulties – a court challenge brought by the state’s teacher and school boards associations has sought to eliminate school vouchers on the claim that they unconstitutionally divert public funds away from public coffers, among other reasons.

Causing perhaps the greatest uproar over sending taxpayer dollars to private schools is the fact that the funds come with virtually no accountability measures attached. While public schools are facing some of the toughest accountability standards ever with the release of the A-F school grading system coming next week, voucher-receiving private schools aren’t required to demonstrate any sort of academic growth or even a minimum standard to the public.

Private schools are also free to use any curriculum they see fit, employ untrained, unlicensed teachers and conduct criminal background checks only on the heads of schools. For the most part, they do not have to share their budgets or financial practices with the public, in spite of receiving public dollars.

While a lengthy court battle has now brought the issue before the state Supreme Court (with a hearing set for February 17), the Court of Appeals has allowed the program to limp along, and some students are now attending private schools with the vouchers.

The biggest recipient of the taxpayer funded program is Greensboro Islamic Academy, which by the end of fall 2014 had received $93,000 in public dollars. N.C. Policy Watch reported last fall that the school was in serious financial trouble, threatening to close its doors the year prior thanks to a $150,000 shortfall.

Rep. Skip Stam (R-Wake), one of the most notable proponents behind the school voucher law, said yesterday at the school choice breakfast that he wants to expand the program further from its $10 million starting point.

“There needs to be an appropriation of $40 million per year to get the program up to where the market is,” said Rep. Stam.

He also said he believes the school choice program will survive the court battle, noting that he read the challengers’ briefs and they are “silly.”

Depending on the outcome of the Supreme Court hearing next month, look for more legislation seeking to expand the Opportunity Scholarships program in the months ahead.

Charter schools

When North Carolina lifted the 100-school cap on the number of charter schools that can operate here back in 2011, the applications poured in initially, but that rate has begun to slow.

The state now has 148 charter schools, according to the N.C. Office of Charter Schools’ website. Eleven more are set to open this fall and 40 more have applied to open in 2016.

There’s considerable political pressure to expand the state’s charter school offerings. One member of the charter school advisory board, Alan Hawkes, tongue-lashed his colleagues via email when they only greenlighted a small number of charter schools to open this fall, saying GOP leaders wanted more.

In an email, Hawkes said lawmakers wanted “operators [to] come into the state like they did in Louisiana and other states and quickly affect the public school choice landscape for the better and in quantity.”

Whether or not charters are affecting the landscape for the better is a matter of dispute. Yesterday a state auditor’s report found that a Kinston charter school’s CEO mismanaged hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars over several years, ultimately leaving that school’s students without an academic home just a few days into the 2013-14 school year.

Three Charlotte-area schools have also abruptly shut their doors in the last year thanks to financial woes.

And relentless questions have dogged the eastern North Carolina charter operator Baker Mitchell, who runs four charter schools and has reportedly profited in the tens of millions in taxpayer dollars through his for-profit companies that lease the land to the schools and run their operations. His notoriety spurred a lengthy investigative report by ProPublica last year.

In a statement made yesterday following the release of the Kinston audit, State Board of Education chair Bill Cobey said the board would pursue legislation that would better equip them to deal with financially troubled charter schools.

Virtual charter schools

During the 2014 session, lawmakers enacted a pilot program that allows two companies to run virtual charter schools in North Carolina.

Only two organizations have applied, each backed by big for-profit companies well known in the world of online learning – the embattled K12, Inc. and Pearson.

The schools plan on serving 3,000 students combined in the first year and stand to receive $66 million in taxpayer dollars annually by the conclusion of the four year pilot.

Members of the State Board of Education pummeled the applicants with questions when they interviewed them earlier this month, questioning their ability to serve students from low-income families and how they would avoid the well-documented failures that particularly K12 has experienced in other states.

In order to access virtual schools, students need computers and an internet connection, a considerable financial hurdle for the state’s poor families.

The state board released earlier this week a draft agreement they would hold with the virtual charter schools. Key pieces to this agreement include requiring the virtual charter schools to provide needy students with computers and internet connections and provide them with learning coaches should parents—who typically serve in that capacity—are unable.

Bryan Setser, who would head up the board for the Pearson-backed N.C. Connections Academy, said they’d meet the new requirements but would scale back in other areas.

“You’d have to prioritize…it could be [cutting back] salaries, could be elements of how we spend time on curriculum revisions, it could be a host of things. We’ll have to make decisions based on the money we have,” said Setser, who said that the public funding lawmakers have slated per student is already on the low side at $5,200, below what state and local districts typically spend.

Even though K12, Inc. is notorious for churning students through its programs and failing to demonstrate academic progress, both of the companies’ virtual charter programs are likely to get the green light since the legislation compels the State Board of Education to get the pilot program up and running this fall.

In Tennessee, Education Commissioner Kevin Huffman ordered K12’s Tennessee Virtual Academy to close at the end of the 2014-15 school year, citing three straight years of poor academic performance and almost complete lack of growth in student achievement, according to N.C. Justice Center education policy analyst Matt Ellinwood.

And, as Ellinwood notes, even though the virtual charter school program is just a pilot, it’s worth pointing out that by the end of the four years, North Carolina will spend more on virtual charter schools than it does on textbooks for the state’s 1.5 million children.

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