Education Week - June 19, 2019 - 15

GOVERNMENT & POLITICS
How Charters Could Factor in 2020's Democratic Primary
By Andrew Ujifusa
If you're following the Democratic presidential primary and you care about education,
it's hard to avoid all the stories and questions
about charters with a 2020 angle.
Are candidates like Sen. Bernie Sanders
of Vermont betraying many Democrats, and
left-leaning voters of color in particular, by
taking on charters?
Or in the era of rolling teacher strikes and
U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, are
some candidates just being savvy when they
at least partially repudiate the independently
run, publicly financed schools?
Those are good questions. But the primary
isn't wrapped up nationwide all in one day.
The first few states to hold primaries or caucuses will play a huge role in establishing
favorites and quickly paring down a big field.
These states' unique political and policy environments are a huge focus for campaigns.
So what does the charter school landscape look like in the first four primary (or
caucus) states of Iowa, New Hampshire,
Nevada, and South Carolina? Despite all
the national angst about charters, is it
possible they won't make much of a difference one way or the other in the beginning
states of the 2020 primaries? Could the an-

swers vary significantly from state to state?
One answer that might stick with you in
terms of the charter footprint: There are
more Chinese restaurants in Bethesda, Md.,
(where Education Week has its offices) than
there are charter schools in all of Iowa. Charters can only operate in Iowa with the approval and oversight of local school districts.
With only two charter schools open in Iowa
about 17 years after the state passed its charter law, it's fair to question the overall political footprint they have in the state, which
holds its Democratic caucus on Feb. 3, 2020.

Hints From Polling Data
Let's look at some relevant polling on charter
schools. In 2017, EdChoice-a nonprofit group
that supports charters and private school
choice-partnered with Braun Research to see
how New Hampshire folks felt about charters.
Asked whether they supported charters,
53 percent of all respondents said yes; the
number rose to 55 percent when the survey
followed up with a description of charters and
restated the question. However, 62 percent
of Democrats opposed charters, and "urbanites" were far more likely to oppose charters
(44 percent) than "small town" residents or
their country cousins in the survey, which

had a margin of error of 4 percentage points.
Sanders won the 2016 New Hampshire
Democratic primary easily, and he continues
to poll well there (although behind former
Vice President Joe Biden). And voters in the
2016 primary were predominantly white.
Nevada had the highest number of students
enrolled in charters of the four early states,
as well as the largest share of students in
charter schools-10.5 percent when looking
at total public K-12 enrollment.
And charter school politics there have in
large part mirrored the increasingly acrimonious debate: With the support of teachers'
unions, Democratic state lawmakers pushed
this year to put a moratorium on new charters, similar to what Sanders wants at a national level. But they were defeated by charter advocates.
How about South Carolina, where Sanders
unveiled his education plan that includes a
proposal to sharply curtail the charter sector?
In 2018-19, South Carolina had the secondhighest number of charter schools of the four
early states. As of 2018-19, 4.5 percent of
South Carolina public K-12 students attended
charter schools, which seems to lag the national average: As of 2016, 6 percent of public
school students nationwide attended charters.
But charters shouldn't be discounted as a

political force in South Carolina, at least according to advocates there. Joseph K. Bowers, the director of operations at the Public
Charter School Alliance of South Carolina,
noted that Orangeburg, S.C., is home to a
charter school focusing on health professions
whose principal recently won a U.S. Department of Education award. Bowers said he
heard from several charter school leaders
after Sanders' speech who were concerned by
his statements.
"Of all places, people said that was the
worst place for him to make that announcement, because there is a big charter school
community in Orangeburg, and it is overwhelmingly African-American," Bowers said.
African-American voters are expected to be
perhaps the key group of voters in the state's
2020 Democratic primary.

State Provisions
Bowers also pointed out that South Carolina law requires at least half of each charter school board to be elected by parents and
guardians of students as well as school staff.
All board members must also be state residents. That's not too far off the part of Sanders' plan that would require half of charter
PAGE 17 >

Safety, data privacy
draw fresh attention
By Marva Hinton
School security, the charter school
sector, and student-data privacy
were among the issues of interest
to parents that drew significant
attention from state lawmakers in
this year's legislative sessions, the
majority of which have now wrapped
up for 2019.
Among the highlights, with at
least 42 legislatures either adjourned or set to adjourn by the end
of this month:
* Florida, where Republican Gov.
Ron DeSantis in May signed a bill
allowing trained, screened public
school teachers to be armed in the
classroom. The new law, which goes
into effect Oct. 1, expands the state's
so-called "Guardian program,"
which was enacted in 2018 in response to the fatal shootings of 17
students and staff members at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School
in Parkland, Fla., last year.
* Texas, where Republican Gov.
Greg Abbott signed a bill this month
that removes caps on the number
of school personnel who can serve
as armed marshals at any school

through the state's school marshal
program. That program was enacted after 10 people died in shootings at Santa Fe High School near
Houston in 2018.
* California, which as of last week
continued to wrestle with a package of bills aimed at reining in the
state's charter schools and checking
the expansion of that sector.
* New Mexico, where lawmakers
sought-but failed-to put a moratorium on charters and to impose an
enrollment cap on them.
* Montana, where lawmakers
passed a bill to govern the activities
of third-party internet service providers to protect students' personal
information online.

Wide Range of Bills
But the sheer range of bills-
and the fact that parents are far
from uniform in their own policy
prescriptions for the issues facing
public education-make any single
scorecard for legislation elusive.
The National PTA, which describes itself as the nation's largest
volunteer child-advocacy association, with more than 4 million members, focuses its legislative activity
at the national level, including on
issues such as federal funding for
family engagement. That leaves it to

Phil Sears/AP

State Legislators Tackle
Broad Basket of Issues
On Parents' Checklist

Florida state Senate President Bill Galvano listens to debate on legislation giving teachers the option to be armed.
A new law allowing trained, screened teachers to do so goes into effect Oct. 1.

state-level organizations to grapple
with the specifics of proposals that
can vary widely from state to state.
School safety is a prime example.
The Education Commission of
the States reports that 396 bills
concerning school safety were introduced this year across 47 states, and
65 of them were enacted. Many of
those bills, 153, included provisions
related to emergency preparedness.
That covers such factors as building security and safety drills. More
than 30 of them had been signed
into law as of late last week.
About a third of the school

safety bills introduced dealt with
school resource officers, and 88 of
them related to guns in schools.
Among those signed into law were
a bill allowing private or religious
schools to employ armed guards
in Virg inia, and New Mexico
legislation designating that only
local school boards can authorize
law-enforcement officers to carry
guns on campus.
"With the number of unfortunate
incidents that have happened in recent years, state leaders are starting to see that they can take a role
in addressing school security, and I

think this year you've seen such a
variety of approaches because states
are still wrestling with what approach they should take," said Zeke
Perez Jr., an analyst with ECS.
He flagged Florida's law as the
broadest enacted so far this year.
"That one really encapsulates a
lot of the different efforts that states
are taking," said Perez. "It provides
training to district personnel on conducting building safety and risk assessments. It has statements related
to school safety plans, and those are
many of the key components of [legPAGE 17 >

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Education Week - June 19, 2019

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