Education Week - June 8, 2016 - 16

CHARTER MOVEMENT AT 25: Amid expansion, questions persist

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because of its size and influence on public
policy, it helped propel the idea into the national consciousness.
In many ways, Los Angeles represents the
rapid evolution of the charter concept and the
direction in which philanthropy has pushed
it. The city is a major beneficiary-or target,
in the view of some critics-of foundation dollars. It brims with CMO-run schools in the
college-prep, no-excuses mold.
Alliance is one of many homegrown charter networks in the city that has been buoyed
by foundation funding. It serves mostly lowincome, Latino students and has grown to
27 schools since opening its first in 2004. At
around 12,000 students, the network is larger
than many school districts in California.
The network has been the target of a
major unionizing effort by the United
Teachers Los Angeles, at a time when
the influence of philanthropic money in
the city's K-12 system has come under
increased scrutiny. That was triggered
last fall when a plan crafted by the Broad
Foundation to more than double the number of charter school seats in the city was
leaked to the Los Angeles Times. With an
influential foundation, powerful teachers'
union, and an elected school board that has
been a political springboard for many of its
members in the city's backyard, Los Angeles reflects many of the tensions surrounding the charter sector nationally. Primarily
that charters are no longer an incubator
for the traditional district system, but an
alternative to it.
"We are the proof point. If they take over
this district, the dominos will fall across
the country," said Steve Zimmer, a former
teacher and the board president of the Los
Angeles Unified School District. The district, with 640,000 students, is the second
largest in the country.
"If you can destroy the bureaucracy here,
you can do it anywhere. ... If you can destroy UTLA, you can destroy any publicsector union."

Charter school students make up a little
more than 20 percent of all public school
students in Los Angeles, and the plan outlined in the memo from the Broad Foundation initially called for that number to grow
to around 50 percent, although that plan is
currently being revised to include schools
other than charters.
The city already has more charter school
students than any other city. The Broad plan,
as it was outlined last fall, would push Los
Angeles into a small club of cities that have
crossed the 50 percent threshold: New Orleans and Detroit.
"We've reached a point of saturation," said
Zimmer. "When we lose more seats to charter schools, we've crossed a threshold where
it has an effect on the key reforms that have
been pushed by this district."

Philanthropy Rising
While the Broad Foundation has invested
millions in Los Angeles' K-12 sector, it's
also emerged as one of the most influential
players in education philanthropy over the
past 15 years-giving over $150 million to
charter schools nationally. Of that, $79 million has gone to charter schools in the Los
Angeles area, according to the foundation.
One of the foundation's most high-profile
initiatives has been its annual Broad Prizes,
which have awarded millions of dollars to
charter management organizations and urban
school districts for college readiness efforts and
scholarships. But after 12 years of singling out
districts it believed were closing achievement
gaps, the Broad Foundation indefinitely suspended the prize for urban districts in 2015,
citing sluggish academic progress.
The charter prize continues.
"We've always been an organization that
looks very carefully at results," said Gregory
McGinity, the executive director for the Eli
and Edythe Broad Foundation. "In terms
of charters, this has been a mainstay for us
because we've seen great data from these organizations and they've produced great opportunities for low-income families. The data

BLACK STUDENTS IN
CHARTERS, BY STATE
The percentage of African-American
students enrolled in charter schools
varies greatly from state to state,
with the highest concentrations in
the northeast. States with statewide
turnaround districts, like Louisiana and
Tennessee, and urban school districts
enroll some of the highest percentages
of black students in charters.

Data show diversity
varies by state
By Arianna Prothero
Minneapolis

Almost every hand is raised in Ms. Markeesha
Zigbuo's 2nd grade class at The Mastery School
in Minneapolis, Minn. Twenty girls, all AfricanAmerican and all dressed in matching purple
plaid jumpers over white collared shirts, squirm
in their seats, locking their elbows and stretching their torsos in an attempt to make themselves
taller and their hands higher.
Behind them, taped to the wall, are the seven
principles of Kwanzaa, an annual celebration of
African heritage.
The Mastery School is one of three schools in
Minneapolis' Harvest Network of Schools, set up to
serve almost exclusively low-income African-American and East African students-some in singlegender programs like this one. "African-American
families have significant needs," explained Eric
Mahmoud, the founder of Harvest. "Many of our
children are walking around with hundreds of
years of history saying they can't [make it]."
Mahmoud believes a curriculum steeped in
African history and culture is crucial to closing
academic achievement gaps between poor black
students and their wealthier, white peers.
He represents a school of thought in one of the
most persistent and nebulous debates of the charter sector: whether there is a harmful lack of diversity in the publicly funded but independently run
schools of choice.
It's a debate that includes disputes over whether
charter schools-untied to neighborhood boundar-

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75% or greater
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Role of Charters
Facet of Debate
About Diversity

is strong and the demand is strong."
Although McGinity says the Broad Foundation is still devoted to supporting urban
school systems, giving from foundations
nationally has moved away from districts
as the major players in education philanthropy have changed.
Giving to charter schools meanwhile,
has ticked upward, and rose significantly
from 2000 to 2010, according to data collected by Reckhow, the researcher from
Michigan State University.
Although private philanthropy and federal
dollars have been a boon for charter management organizations, there's concern that new
types of schools are being overlooked.
"I wish there was more assistance to outstanding schools that want to create one or
two more schools," instead of dozens, said
Joe Nathan of the St. Paul-based Center for
School Change, who was also involved in
crafting Minnesota's charter law. "I think
the role of philanthropy has been very powerful and very mixed."
A 2015 report by The Mind Trust, an Indianapolis-based charter advocacy organization, said that although some schools have
pioneered radically different models, most
charters look a lot like their district school
counterparts.
The report pointed to risk-averse authorizers and philanthropists opting to back
well-established models, such as CMOs,
over untested ideas.
But innovation is in the eye of the beholder,
and even charter school advocates are divided on whether the movement has really
pushed the envelope.
Although Ember Reichgott Junge, the
former Minnesota lawmaker, believes there
should be more unique ideas coming out
of the charter sector, she points to polling
numbers from companies such as PDK/Gallup as proof that the experiment she helped
launched 25 years ago is a success.
"I'm very thrilled that even today, twothirds of America supports chartering," she
said. "I ask you what else does two-thirds of
America support today?"

LA
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SOURCE: Education Week Research Center,
2016. Analysis of data from U.S. Department of
Education's Common Core of Data (2012-13).

INTERACTIVE DATA: View enrollment break

downs for all student groups.
16 | EDUCATION WEEK | June 8, 2016 | www.edweek.org

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