Where's Cerf's Charter Report? - Day 500!

It was 500 days ago today that ACTING NJ Education Commissioner Chris Cerf said this:

Vowing to create "more transparency," acting Education Commissioner Christopher Cerf today said the state will ask an outside agency to analyze why some charter schools out-perform traditional public schools.

Speaking at a meeting of the state Board of Education, Cerf said "we stand by" controversial data about charter school performance released in January, but acknowledged that "deeper analysis" is necessary.

That data showed that 79 percent of charter schools outperformed district schools on math exams in the state’s poorest districts, and that 69 percent outperformed their home districts in language arts. Critics assailed the numbers, saying charter school test scores may have been higher than traditional public school scores in part because charters have fewer very poor students.

"They are what they are," Cerf said of the January data. "They are not what you might call nuanced."

Cerf said an independent analysis will be conducted "as quickly as is humanly possible." He also released an "interim report" on charter schools that he said "dispels the notion" that charter schools don’t serve special needs kids. And he presented data showing that there are poor children in charter schools. [emphasis mine]

About nine months later, Matt DiCarlo asked a simple question: "Where's the report?" That's when I introduced the Cerf Charter Report Count-Up Clock!



Here we are, 500 days later, still waiting for this report to appear "as quickly as is humanly possible." I actually have it on good authority that the NJDOE has been shopping around for the right think-tanky group to spin the numbers the way they need them, but who knows when the rotations will begin?


And spin is what they shall need. As Bruce Baker pointed out, the statewide picture on charters is "pretty ugly": it would be very hard to argue the expansion of charters has helped student achievement much at all. Worse, there's more than ample evidence charters are causing a new wave of segregation in the state: segregation by language, by socio-economic status, by language, and even by race.

It doesn't help much that Cerf's new framework for judging charters does not measure performance in alleviating segregation; it merely measures intent. A real report on New Jersey's charters would undoubtedly point this out; is that what the ACTING Commissioner really wants right now?

On the one-year anniversary of "Where's Cerf's Charter Report Day," Dr. Baker chided me for calling for this report to come out, because it's clear New Jersey does not collect the data it needs to really unpack the relationship between student achievement, student characteristics, and charter school effects. That was DiCarlo's initial criticism of Cerf: the ACTING Commissioner was making claims to justify his charter expansion policy that the data did not - indeed, could not - support.*

One would think a policy maker as "data-driven" as Cerf would be working hard to rectify this. One would think he wouldn't be cheering on the expansion of charters - especially dubious virtual and "blended" charters - without the evidence to back him up.

No such luck; the state plows ahead with charter expansion, selling the policy like used-car salesmen, without the slightest apparent care as to whether it's actually working or not.

ADDING: Just switched the graphic above. More to come!

* Very bad writing on my part; sorry. Matt DiCarlo did not say that a good report couldn't be made with the current data; that was all Bruce Baker. Apparently Matt thinks a strong report could be produced. I take everything Matt has to say seriously, but I do have my doubts. Disaggregating data merely by Free Lunch-Reduced Lunch isn't very accurate, and I don't think we can account for attrition just by looking at cohort numbers, especially at over-subscribed schools.

Having said that: Bruce has produced a lot of good info based purely on NJDOE data. So there really is no reason to produce some sort of report.

The Economist Fails On Charter Schools

Last week, The Economist decided it wanted to try to do charters, giving us yet another opportunity to see how the press so often gets education wrong. As is apparently taught at all journalism schools, the story starts with an example of chartery success:

“EVERYONE’S pencil should be on the apple in the tally-mark chart!” shouts a teacher to a class of pupils at Harvest Preparatory School in Minneapolis. Papers and feet are shuffled; a test is coming. Each class is examined every six or seven weeks. The teachers are monitored too. As a result, Harvest Prep outperformed every city school district in Minnesota in maths last year. It is also a “charter” school; and all the children are black.

Notice the careful phrasing: Harvest Prep didn't beat every city school; it beat every city school district. See, charters are their own districts, which means that little Harvest Prep, with its enrollment of 343 kids, is going up against Minneapolis, which enrolls over 36,000 students. That hardly seems to be an apt comparison.

So how does Harvest do matched up with urban schools? Well, maybe not at the top, but actually very well:

(Sorry, "All schools" means "all Minnesota schools." Hey, what do you want for free?) 

OK, so Harvest hasn't outperformed every school in Minneapolis (and I'm not even including the other charter schools - sorry, way more data massaging than I'm willing to do!). But let's be honest - this is really quite good. They even beat (barely) the state average.

And, yes, this is a school where nearly 100% of the children are black:

This is from the National Center for Education Statistics, so a source with very slightly different data (and a year older). You can see that the numbers confirm this is a school that has a student body that is almost entirely African-America. No surprise: the school's website describes it as "...the only accredited full-time, African-centered pre-school and elementary school in the state of Minnesota." Whatever you may think about that as a matter of principle, there is no doubt Harvest has a student body that is composed entirely of minority children.

Something else jumps out: Harvest Prep serves a large population of children in poverty as measured by eligibility for Free Lunch. Yes, there are public schools in Minneapolis that serve more, but Harvest bests the district average (as do all charters in the city).

So what's the problem? The school scores very well in tests. They have many children who live in poverty. They have a 100% minority student population. Isn't this exactly what a successful charter school is supposed to look like?

Well...

In Minneapolis, one-quarter of the students are Limited English Proficient, but not one student at Harvest is*. This isn't surprising; you wouldn't expect a school serving black children to have many children who don't speak English at home (unless they went out of their way to recruit African immigrant children, which it doesn't appear they do). This is going to affect math scores, because so much of the testing is inevitably in applied mathematics, which requires good reading skills.

Further, the average special education population in the Minneapolis public schools is three times that of Harvest's. That's got to have a big affect on testing.

Now, I don't mean to knock Harvest by pointing this out - far from it. This school may well be doing a lot of great things (I'm not prepared to say for sure until I see the attrition rates, among other things). There's no disputing they are getting great test scores from children who traditionally do very poorly on exams such as these. Good for them.

No, my problem, once again, is with the charter cheerleaders and their friends in the press who fail to see that "successful" charters are very often not replicable because they serve different student populations than public schools. 

Further, no one - at least, not The Economist - wants to discuss the very real issue of whether the segregation that takes place in a charter like Harvest is worth the "success" of the students. Are we saying that young African-American children can't learn in an environment that mixes children of different races and children with differing proficiency in English and children with differing special needs? Are schools that segregate the best we can do for urban children?

Don't expect The Economist to ask; instead, expect tripe like this:

Charter schools have been successful because they offer freedom to shape the school to the pupils, rather than the other way round. Schools can change the length of the school day, fire bad teachers and spend their money as they wish. At Harvest Prep the school year is continuous, with short and relatively frequent bursts of holiday, because that keeps learning on track and kids out of trouble.

Oh, please. The school is closed from July 1 to August 20; that's hardly "continuous." The last three weeks were "early release" days. Are you telling me another few weeks and extended hours four days a week for part of the year makes a huge difference, but it's not worth mentioning that there is not one LEP student in the entire school? Come on.

This article, like so much writing and lecturing and moviemaking about charters, just won't face facts. Charter schools are not replicable. We can't have a serious discussion about them until we all are willing to face this simple truth.


* Geek note: I've worked with data enough to know you can't always trust it - garbage in, garbage out. The spreadsheet from the MNDOE had "NULL" for Harvest's LEP number, but there is a chance that "NULL" could be wrong; it could mean no data was reported. I really don't think that's the case; again, I don't think a school with close to a 100% black population is going to have many LEP kids, if any. But, as always, caveat lector.

Music Posting

I think this is just absolutely beautiful:



Lyle Mays is one of my unsung heroes. He has tremendous taste, but when he needs to pull out the stops and blow, he can just let lose. He was in Pat Metheny's shadow for all those years, kind of like Scotty Pippin to Michael Jordon. But anything this guy does is always worth a listen.

Holding Charters Accountable For Equity

Late yesterday, the NJ education world got the decree from ACTING Lord High Executioner Chris Cerf as to which charters His Lordship deemed worthy of receiving a seal from his signet ring.

Despite Cerf's absurd contention that charters are "the most democratic schools we have," this round of approvals shows just how autocratic the entire system is. With little transparency and no local control - districts have to pay for Cerf's charters, but have no saying in their approval or oversight - school systems like Princeton have had to set aside funds for the last two years while ACTING Lord Cerf unilaterally decided whether he would bestow a charter on a school located in the well-performing district.

To deflect from this absurdity, Cerf, good bureaucrat that he is, points to the new procedures and policies that he - and he alone - has approved for use in holding charters accountable:

The Performance Framework for all new charter schools announced today will set clear expectations for schools and will evaluate them in three areas: whether the school is an academic success; whether the school is financially viable; and whether the school is equitable and organizationally sound. The Department will introduce a Performance Framework for all existing charter schools by the end of the summer.  

This Framework will help to define charter school success and create a comprehensive and systemic review process for all charter schools. Schools will be assessed in a number of areas, such as how the school compares to similar “peer” schools; progress of individual subgroups of students and the school as a whole over time; whether the school is financially healthy and sustainable; whether the school has equitable admissions and enrollment practices to serve all students; and whether the school offers a safe and structured learning environment. [emphasis mine]

Now that's very interesting. Because, as I and others have documented many times, there is a disturbing trend of segregation in the "successful" charters Cerf holds up as models. These schools show a pattern of segregating students by poverty, or by Limited English Proficiency (LEP), or by special educational need, or even by race - and that's how they get their relatively high test scores.

Will this new "Performance Framework" truly judge a charter school's performance when it comes to equity? Because it certainly does judge performance in academic outcomes; for example:

 2b. Are students performing well on statewide

assessments in Mathematics compared with

students in the school’s district-of-residence?

.Exceeds Standard

• On NJASK Math (3-8): if at least 50% proficient,

then at least 20 percentage points above districtof-

residence; if below 50% proficient, then at

least 25 percentage points above district-ofresidence

• On HSPA Math (HS): if at least 70% proficient,

then at least 20 percentage points above districtof-

residence; if below 70% proficient, then at

least 25 percentage points above district-ofresidence

.Meets Standard

• On NJASK Math (3-8): if at least 50% proficient,

then 10-19 percentage points above district-ofresidence;

if below 50% proficient, then 15-24

percentage points above the district-of-residence

• On HSPA Math (HS): if at least 70% proficient,

then 10-19 percentage points above district-ofresidence;

if below 70% proficient, then 15-24

percentage points above district-of-residence

.Does Not Meet Standard

• On NJASK Math (3-8): if at least 50% proficient,

then 0-9 percentage points above district-ofresidence;

if below 50% proficient, then 5-14

percentage points above the district-of-residence

• On HSPA Math (HS): if at least 70% proficient,

then 0-9 percentage points above district-ofresidence;

if below 70% proficient, then 5-14

percentage points above district-of-residence

.Falls Far Below Standard

• On NJASK Math (3-8): if at least 50% proficient

but below district-of-residence; if below 50%

proficient but less than 5 percentage points

above the district-of-residence

• On HSPA Math (HS): if at least 70% proficient

but below district-of-residence; if below 70%

proficient but less than 5 points above district-ofresidence

That is a clearly delineated, quantifiable performance standard judged against the other schools in the district. It's the performance standard Cerf himself uses to tout the "successes" of charters: they perform better than their neighboring schools, so they must be successful.

Well, if we're going to have a performance standard for academic achievement, shouldn't we also have a performance standard for equity? Shouldn't a school have to demonstrate that it meets a clearly stated, quantifiable standard - just like in academics - compared to other schools in the district? Let's see:

 2a. Are the school’s admissions and enrollment

practices fair and equitable, as required by law?

.Meets Standard

Policies and practices related to admissions,

lottery, waiting lists, fair and open recruitment,

and enrollment are fair and equitable, as required

by law. The school does not discriminate in its

admission policies or practices on the basis

of intellectual or athletic ability, measures of

achievement or aptitude, status as a handicapped

person, proficiency in the English language, or any

other basis that would be illegal if used by a school

district, either by policy or any other means. The

school is committed to serving all students, as

demonstrated by its recruiting efforts and making

application information and materials accessible to

families.

.Does Not Meet Standard

The school’s admissions and enrollment practices

do not meet the guidelines described above. [emphasis mine]

Whoa - hold on here! According to this framework, the charter has to hold its percentages of kids meeting academic proficiency levels up for scrutiny, compared to other neighboring schools. But a charter doesn't have to compare itself to neighboring schools in terms of student population! As long as the charter can make a case that its recruiting methods appear equitable, it doesn't have to actually have a diverse population; all it needs to do is show that it's trying.

In other words: when it comes to equity, a charter school doesn't have to perform.

Well, why is that the case with student populations, but not with student achievement? If charters have to show that their kids are getting good test scores compared to the neighboring public schools, why don't they have to show they are also taking in the same types of students?

Let me demonstrate; here again are the enrollment percentages for free lunch eligible students in Hoboken and at the Elysian Charter School:

Chris Christie is happy to endorse Elysian's academic success relative to the other schools in the district. And the school clearly does have a population of children living in poverty - but it's much smaller than the neighboring public schools.

So, if NJDOE is really serious about equity, why doesn't the Performance Framework have a metric for performance in enrolling students in poverty? Heck, I'll make one up right now, for free!

Does the school have an equitable population of children living in poverty, as defined by eligibility for free lunch, as compared with other schools in the charter school’s district-of-residence?

• Exceeds Standard:
Has a percentage of students eligible for Free Lunch equal to or greater than that of the average percentage for the sending district.

• Meets Standard:
Has a percentage of students eligible for Free Lunch no less than 80% than that of the average percentage for the sending district.

• Does Not Meet Standard:
Has a percentage of students eligible for Free Lunch between 60% and 79% than that of the average percentage for the sending district.

• Falls Far Below Standard:
Has a percentage of students eligible for Free Lunch less than 60% than that of the average percentage for the sending district.

So, Elysian would still be judged as having excellent test scores... but as falling "Far Below Standard" for equity. Seems fair to me.

This is simple stuff, folks. If schools are going to be judged in terms of academics by their results, they should be judged on equity by their results. You can't have it both ways. If we're really going to be serious about "accountability," let's hold these schools accountable for their results in equity, not just their intentions.

Of course, that blows a hole in the entire reformy argument for charter schools, doesn't it? And no emperor likes to explain where his clothes went...

It's good to set up the Performance Framework!

(Yes, I have seen some movies from this century.)

Fully Virtual Charters Halted in NJ - For Now

Well, well, well...

The state’s first proposed full-time virtual charter school will have to wait at least year to begin educating students.

The state Department of Education today announced approval of nine new charter schools for September, but said the New Jersey Virtual Academy Charter School, a full-time online charter school, would instead be given a "planning" year to further develop "academic and operational components."

However, two offering a mix of online and traditional learning did receive approval. Both Newark Prep and Merit Preparatory of Newark Charter School intend to offer "blended" learning in a school setting, Newark Prep serving high school students, and Merit Prep starting by enrolling sixth-graders.

Another full-time virtual school, Monmouth County-based New Jersey Virtual Charter School, requested an additional planning year, as did Merit Preparatory of Trenton, also a blended school.

Seven "regular" charter schools were also approved to open in September, following a final "preparedness" review. This will bring the state total of charter schools 86. [emphasis mine]

I'm sure we'll have much to say about these other charters in days and weeks to come. But let's take a minute now to appreciate what just happened here:

A fully on-line virtual charter, backed by politically powerful people, was ready to be rammed down the throats of New Jersey's citizens with virtually no public input, oversight, or regulation. But within the space of just a couple of weeks, a perfect storm emerged:

• Virtual charter scandals started popping up all over the rest of the country, particularly in Pennsylvania.
• A coalition of disparate interest groups, seeing the threat unaccountable and profit-driven virtual schools posed to New Jersey's schools, put aside their differences and banded together.
• The NJ education netroots did a series of reports that cast gave doubt on the entire enterprise; the MVP for this was the invaluable Mother Crusader, Darcie Cimarusti.

That wasn't enough to stop the blended models, but the real threat here was a fully virtual school that could spread throughout the state. I have grave doubts about the brick-and-morter virtuals that were approved, but at least we can monitor them, and they can't leave their sending districts.

I want to be clear about something: I am not saying there isn't a place for high-quality on-line instruction. What I am saying is that the for-profit, educationally dubious model pitched by K12 Inc and others needs serious vetting before we consider it even on a trial scale.

Those of us in the "real reform" movement in New Jersey are not getting everything we want - but we have actually had a very good month or two. We stopped Regis Academy Charter, a blow for local control. We got a tenure reform bill that still has problems, but lost its most pernicious parts. Now we've stopped the first fully virtual charter in the state from being approved without serious oversight.

There's much to do, but we're not doing it alone anymore. Darcie, Deb, Kendal, Blue Jersey, SOSNJ - with an assist from national heavy hitter Diane Ravitch - and yours truly all helped win this. The education netroots has become a serious partner for established real reformers like the ELC, the unions, the Garden State Coalition, and others.

Let's keep it up!

I'm sorry, Dave, but I'm not coming to New Jersey this year...

This Is What "Democracy" Looks Like?

Back to today's truly awful op-ed by ACTING NJ Education Commissioner Chris Cerf:

I already explained how Cerf twists facts to make charters look like they serve many poor and minority children when, in fact, compared to their neighboring public schools, they do no such thing.

Diane Ravitch gave Cerf a history lesson and explained to him that Albert Shanker, contrary to Cerf's assertions, would never have supported the NJDOE's charter school plans.

I'll go back a few months and link to Bruce Baker, here and here, who already explained how wrong Cerf is to assert that charter schools are public schools; they may receive public funding, but they differ from public schools in profound and meaningful ways.

I'll also rely on the good Dr. Baker to show how silly Cerf's claims about TEAM Academy are. TEAM may be a fine school, but it is simply not replicable.

Having shredded much of this ridiculous piece, let's move on to this claim of Cerf's:

Opponents of charter schools have made careers out of maligning them. They claim that charter schools are an effort to privatize public education. They are not -- charter schools are public schools. Opponents claim that charter schools are “undemocratic” because citizens do not vote to open them. In fact, charter schools are the most democratic schools we have because if parents do not choose to enroll their child in a charter school, that school will close. [emphasis mine]

Really? Charter schools are the "most democratic" schools? Really?

Let's review just how "democratic" charters really are:

- There is only one charter school authorizer in the State of New Jersey: ACTING Commissioner Chris Cerf, who is unelected and unconfirmed.

- ACTING Commissioner Cerf has unilaterally appointed the National Association of Charter School Authorizers, a private group only accountable to him, to review charter applications.

- The reviews of those applications are only made public after Open Public Records Act requests. If the NJDOE chooses to refuse an OPRA request, it goes before the Government Records Council. Who sits on this unelected board? The unelected and unconfirmed Chris Cerf.

- The payments to the NACSA reviewers are made with private monies, which prevents the Legislature from having any "power of the pursestrings" over the process.

- Local school boards are compelled to budget monies for charters that haven't even received their final approvals.

- Those school boards with their elected representatives do not have any approval or oversight powers for those charters, even though they have to pay for them.

- Parents who "choose" to send their children to these charters have no legal right to demand oversight, policy changes, or changes in representation on the governing board.

- A student may be dismissed at any time if the administration of a charter feels that student is not adhering to a policies or codes of conduct, which are developed and administered solely by the school's leadership.

- Charters often behave as though they are not state actors in regards to employee and student rights.

- Charters may receive all manner of private renumeration; there is no public input or oversight into the terms of accepting these finds. (See the links to Bruce Baker's posts above for more on these last points)

This is not what a democratic process looks to me; frankly, the secrecy, autocracy, and cronyism remind me of another form of government...

So, young Boris, tell me more about this charter school of yours...

ADDING: Well, the Kremlinologists will be looking over this announcement about the newly approved charters in NJ very carefully. Stand by...

What Planet Does Chris Cerf Live On?!

Even after all we've been through on this blog, I am still amazed that NJ's ACTING Commissioner of Education in NJ, given everything we know about charters, would write something like this:

In New Jersey, charter schools serve less than two percent of students, but they disproportionately serve our highest-need students. More than 61 percent of charter school students are African American, compared to the state average of 16 percent, and more than 70 percent of charter school students are low income, compared to 32 percent in the state.

Do I really have to spell this out again?

I mean, dear lord, Bruce Baker has written about this over and over again. Here's his latest:

So who cares? Well, it matters a great deal for policy implications whether the effect is created by concentrating less poor, English speaking females in a given school or by actually providing substantively better curriculum/instruction.  The latter might be scalable but the FORMER IS NOT! There just aren’t enough non-poor girls in Newark to create (or expand) a whole bunch of these schools!

It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever to compare the student populations of charters to the population of the entire state, because charters are overwhelmingly clustered in poorer, urban areas. When you compare them to the neighboring public schools, the trend is clear: "successful" charter schools tend to have fewer children in poverty, fewer children who don't speak English at home, and fewer children with special needs than neighboring public schools.


What's worse: the NJDOE tends to have a predilection for closing or restructuring charters that do serve the neediest children. There is, by all appearances, a reward system in place for segregating children into public schools.

I'll try to get to the rest of this truly awful op-ed later, but let me just address one other comment:

Opponents of charter schools have made careers out of maligning them. They claim that charter schools are an effort to privatize public education. They are not -- charter schools are public schools. Opponents claim that charter schools are “undemocratic” because citizens do not vote to open them. In fact, charter schools are the most democratic schools we have because if parents do not choose to enroll their child in a charter school, that school will close. [emphasis mine]

Well, I am not an opponent of charter schools per se; I just believe in looking at the facts. But I suppose the ACTING Commissioner would count me, and SOSNJ, and parents like Darcie Cimarusti, as "opponents."

Do you really want to compare tax returns and financial records on this, Mr. Cerf? Do you really want to see how teachers and parents like me and Darcie stack up against education corporatists like yourself in how charters have affected our "careers"?

Yeah, I didn't think so.

Music Posting

I haven't practiced in weeks; so much else to do. Whenever I need to get myself going again, I listen to some great music, like this:



There are few things better, to me, than listening to five people who can just really, really play. Enjoy.

Virtual Cronies

Darcie Cimarusti, in a stellar bit of reporting, breaks down the cronyism behind the approval of two "blended learning" charter schools that rely heavily on online learning for their education model.  Despite the reports from Pennsylvania, Ohio and the rest of the nation about corruption, exorbitant prices, and poor results from cyber charters, New Jersey seems determined to plow ahead.

Why is that? Why don't we put the brakes on these questionable schools, as NJ Assemblyman Patrick Diegnan suggests? Why not take the time to study the evidence before ramming these schools through at a cost of millions to taxpayers and local school districts?

Here's a clue:

The three of the four virtual charters currently up for approval have two things in common: they are going to be managed by K12 Inc., and they will be based in Newark (the fourth, based in Monmouth County, also is reportedly aligned with K12; it appears to be replicating services already provided by an agency in Monmouth for a fraction of the proposed costs).

According to both the New York Times and the Nation, K12 Inc. works very hard to cultivate political connections across the country, spending nearly half-a-million dollars on direct contributions in state-level races.

What the articles fail to document, however, are the contributions made by members of K12's board of directors. K12's chairman until very recently was Andrew Tisch, of the famous New York Tisch family. Reports are that Tisch stepped down as chairman just a few weeks ago, but still appears to still serve on the board. He also appears to have been very well-compensated for his position, receiving both stock and options grants from the company.

Why does this matter?

Because Andrew Tisch and his family are Newark Mayor Cory Booker's biggest financial supporters. According to NJ elections records, Tisch and his wife, Ann, gave just a hair less than the maximum allowable contribution to Booker's last mayoral campaign. Andrews's cousins, Laurie Sussman Tisch and Jonathan Tisch, both gave the maximum amount. Other members of the family are also heavy hitters in the Booker campaign.

Booker's relentless push to expand charters in Newark has been very well-documented, both here and elsewhere. He and ACTING Education Commissioner Cerf have used money from both Eli Broad and Mark Zuckerberg to privatize Newark's schools, enriching their friends and associates in the process. This has all been over the objections of local citizens, who have no say in the management of their schools, despite real concerns about growing segregation.

Well, it appears that Booker's charter cheerleading has real benefits for the people who finance his campaigns. Thanks, in part, to Booker's bully pulpit, Newark is poised to bring in substantial and growing revenues for K12 Inc.

And it doesn't hurt Booker's supporters that the President of the state's Board of Education, Arcelio Aponte, works for Booker in his day job as the Director of Operations and Management in the city's Economic Development department.

The cronyism surrounding the rapid expansion of charters - especially virtual charters - is frightening enough. Add to it the profit motive, the lack of local control, and the questionable value of these schools, and we're looking at a virtual disaster in the making.

ADDING: More on Tisch and Booker:

That would be welcome news for Mr. Booker’s wealthy supporters, who also happen to be some of the richest investors in New York. Andrew Tisch, chairman of the executive committee of the Loews Corporation, held a fund-raiser for Mr. Booker at the Regency last year. Gayle King, best friend to the queen of daytime television, Oprah Winfrey, hosted an evening for him at the West Village workshop of Diane von Furstenberg. Former U.S. Senator Bill Bradley and Barbra Streisand have sung his praises. [emphasis mine]

Oh, my.

ALSO ADDING: Folks, I really have no control over the ads. I was just as stunned as anyone when K12 ads started appearing here. I honestly do not know if I can turn them off or how.

ADDING EVEN MORE: Darcie has another post up about cyber charters:

So, if you can't make a statewide virtual charter work in Teaneck because the parents,residents, superintendent, school board, politicians, and press will have a field day with the ridiculousness of a $4.7 million bottom line, where can you put one?

I know, NEWARK!

• Where the Mayor is an outspoken cheerleader for everything and anything reformy.  
• Where the Senator, who clearly sees what's going on in education, is bullied by the Governor.  
• Where the superintendent reigns supreme over the Advisory Board, elected by the parents and residents of Newark.  
• Where the state refuses to let go of it's control of the public schools, and isn't above tanking the QSAC scores to maintain it's choke hold.  

This, and this alone, explains how four cyber charters may be opening in Newark this Fall.  There is no local control and no local voice.  It has been snuffed out.  

Yep. And the mayor is in debt to the guy who's making money from this whole deal.

Read Darcie's entire post keeping in mind Booker's connections to K12. It's outrageous, but typical.

Dave, Newark sounds like a wonderful town...

A Virtual Disaster in PA

Uh-oh:

FBI agents on Thursday raided the office of Pennsylvania Charter Cyber School founder Nick Trombetta, who is suspected of misusing Pennsylvania tax dollars to fund his out-of-state ventures, KDKA News reports.

The FBI raided the administrative offices of PA Cyber and other ventures founded by Trombetta, including the Avanti Management Group -- a for-profit consultant firm based in Ohio.

The Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School, founded in 2000, enrolled more than 11,300 students in the 2011-12 academic year and has an annual budget of more than $100 million. Critics say the $10,000 the school receives for each child far exceeds the cost of educating a student online, and that the excess money has gone to other Trombetta ventures such as the National Network of Digital Schools and the Lincoln Interactive, which develops and markets online curriculum.

These ventures have spawned cyber schools nationwide, and a federal investigation is now underway to determine if Trombetta personally profited.

Even a wingnut like Gov. Tom Corbett agrees that Pennsylvania has to put the brakes on cyber schools. Of course, when eight out of 12 cybers in the state don't even make Adequate Yearly Progress, it's kind of hard to justify continuing to shovel money at them - no matter how many ads they buy with taxpayer funds to sell themselves.

But, hey, here in Jersey, we're plowing right ahead! I mean, who are the NJDOE or the state BOE or the Legislature to question industry shills who tell us to ignore these schools' records of failure? How dare stakeholders like the NJEA and the NJ School Boards Association - normally not the best of buds - come together to block this "progress"!

So ignore the facts, ignore the record, ignore the stories of corruption, ignore what other states are doing. After all: it's all for the kids.

Dave, I'm doing it all for the kids...

ADDING: Oh dear lord, you have got to be kidding me:

A former board president and founder of a Northwest Philadelphia charter school was sentenced in federal court today to 2 years in prison for stealing $522,000 in taxpayer money to prop up a restaurant, a health-food store, and a private school he controlled, and for other business and personal expenses.

In April, shortly before he was scheduled to go to trial, Hugh C. Clark, pleaded guilty to all 28 criminal counts related to his role in a scheme to drain funds from the New Media Technology Charter School.

Clark was indicted by a federal grand jury in April 2011 - nearly two years after The Inquirer reported allegations of fiscal mismanagement and conflicts of interest at New Media.

The sentencing memorandum from the U.S. Attorney's office described Clark as an Ivy League lawyer "who stole funds intended for the public school children of Philadelphia. No amount of money was too large or too small for defendant Clark to steal."

And as if that's not enough:

Rather than fight the Pennsylvania Department of Education, the beleaguered Frontier Virtual Charter High School will surrender its operating charter.

The cyber charter school's board made the decision during an emergency meeting Thursday afternoon, according to Brian H. Leinhauser, a lawyer who represents the school.

He said Frontier would release a statement Friday outlining its reasons.

Frontier, which has administrative offices at 3020 Market St., has been plagued with financial and management problems since it was launched last fall.

By law, the state Education Department is responsible for overseeing cyber charter schools, which provide online instruction to students statewide in their homes.

Education Secretary Ronald Tomalis filed documents Monday saying he intended to yank the school's charter for failing to deliver education it promised students, violating the state charter-school law, spending taxpayer money on nonschool expenses, and failing to maintain the finances necessary to provide services to students.

It's a freaking epidemic!