Over the past few years, the Legislature has passed several new laws that limit the expansion of charter schools and provide additional oversight of these publicly funded school alternatives. The laws’ backers say that these laws boost accountability, but it’s increasingly obvious that they have more troubling goals in mind.
Charter schools remain a bright spot in California’s educational system, especially for those poor and minority students stuck in under-performing districts. Teachers’ unions have been using their expanded political muscle to stifle the competition. They are back again this year with yet another bill that would undermine the state’s noble charter-school experiment.
This session, the California Teachers’ Association is backing Assembly Bill 1316 by Assembly member Patrick O’Donnell, D-Long Beach. The legislation uses a scandal in one San Diego charter system as a pretext to regulate further every charter school – with a particular focus on limiting schools that provide non-classroom-based learning.
The voluminous bill would create “parity” by forcing charters to endure the same auditing and accounting standards faced by other school districts. It would create an Office of Inspector General with subpoena power to investigate charters. It would give state officials more say in how these independent schools operate – requiring them to behave in a similar manner as traditional schools.
The bill would reduce funding for distance-learning charters – providing them with only 70% of the funds that traditional districts receive for the same programs. The bill would limit independent study curricula, expand teacher-to-pupil ratios, erode the ability of small school districts to authorize non-classroom-based charters and impose over-the-top auditing rules.
The bill also would dramatically increase oversight fees that all charters must pay. AB 1316 simply is the latest attempt to require charters to mirror public schools. This approach is illogical. The entire purpose of charter schools is break free from the bureaucratic constraints and union work rules that have impeded the ability of public schools to provide a quality education.
If the state turns charters into de facto public schools, then what’s the point of even having charters? When traditional schools fail their students or when there’s a scandal in a particular public school, lawmakers don’t shut down or reduce the number of those schools. When there’s a problem in a charter school, however, they use it as an excuse to harass them out of existence.
“It is time for a correction in state law to halt the hundreds of millions of dollars in fraud and abuse recently seen among (non-classroom-based) charter schools,” according to Assembly member O’Donnell’s legislative fact sheet. Yet in that particular scandal, the district attorney’s office filed several indictments. The current oversight system is working.
“AB 1316 would essentially eliminate ‘non-classroom-based’ charter schools by imposing unworkable mandates for site-based programming, excessive limits on enrollment and mandatory funding cuts,” according to a letter to lawmakers signed by some of California’s leading charter organizations. AB 1316 also imposes “constraints on all charter schools, eroding their opportunity to innovate, or deliver mission-driven and student-centered programs.”
This isn’t about boosting accountability, but is a bare-knuckled union attempt to push the state’s overwhelmingly successful charter system to the margins. If California lawmakers truly are concerned about the plight of its most-vulnerable students, they should put an end to this travesty.
