Gwinnett school system tries to cow charters
The bully is trying to keep control over the schoolyard.
That’s the bottom line of the lawsuit that the Gwinnett County school district filed last week. Gwinnett claims the state’s Charter Schools Commission acted illegally both in granting a charter to Ivy Preparatory Academy and in funding the all-girls school.
We’ll get to those matters in a moment, but first some background is in order.
School choice has been a long time in coming to Georgia, despite the state’s lengthy history of poor education. Charter schools, which are publicly funded but don’t have to follow all the rules that traditional schools do, are one tool for putting pressure on underperforming or just unimaginative public systems. Offering a free alternative allows students, particularly low-income kids who can’t afford a private education, to move to schools that better suit them.
But despite being popular with students and parents, charter schools have taken root slowly.
In 2000, then-Gov. Roy Barnes called for 100 charter schools within five years. We’ve only barely met that goal. Charter operators sometimes report that local systems are uncooperative, keen to avoid competition.
Charter schools have long been a key conservative initiative. But Barnes is of course a Democrat, and so are two other prominent supporters of the idea — President Barack Obama and his education secretary, Arne Duncan.
So the obstacles to charter-school growth aren’t partisan or even mostly ideological. They owe to obstinacy from the very monopolies they are supposed to help break. It’s about control.
Which brings us back to Gwinnett County.
The school system’s constitutional claims boil down to an argument that the legislature was wrong to empower the Charter Schools Commission to create and fund schools without local school boards’ permission.
But given that education is one of the state’s primary constitutional responsibilities, it would take an overly narrow reading of the law to conclude that legislators didn’t have the authority to make such decisions.
As for the money angle, the Gwinnett system claims in part that the state’s grant of some $850,000 to Ivy Preparatory Academy risks “irreparable harm” to other county students.
Let’s see: For the current fiscal year, the state granted $4,065.07 per pupil to Gwinnett schools. Take away the $850,000 for Ivy Prep, and the 216 Gwinnett residents who attend it, and per-pupil funding for Gwinnett comes to … $4,065.25.
Hmmm. Does this mean Gwinnett officials are among those who believe more spending only leads to worse results?
The school district also complains that the state is effectively taking away local revenue, because it withholds extra state money to make up for the local funding that Ivy Prep doesn’t receive. But as we just saw, per-pupil state funding isn’t falling.
Anyway, money is fungible. If Gwinnett did have a shortfall of state funding, it would also retain the local money that would have been spent on those 216 Ivy Prep students had they stayed in other Gwinnett schools. It’s a wash.
But a wash is what the public-school monopolies fear. Under Georgia’s original charter-school law, the state couldn’t withhold funds to make up for the local money that charter schools routinely don’t receive. That meant charter schools were operating at a serious financial disadvantage. Now the state is merely adding a reason that it can withhold funds from a local system; it can already do so if the system doesn’t administer a required examination, for example.
Many Gwinnett schools are good, but this case’s repercussions would extend elsewhere. Parents in Clayton County and, more recently, Pulaski and Peach counties, have been so desperate to get their children into better schools that they have given false information about their home address. They ought to have a legal option.
A Missouri court recently upheld that state’s charter-schools law in a case resembling this one in several aspects. Georgia courts would be wise to be equally deferential to the legislature, and let schools compete in classrooms, not courtrooms.
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37 comments Add your comment
Class of '98
September 16th, 2009
6:38 pm
Who cares? Tucker and Bookman write columns that are dead wrong, but at least they’re interesting. Gwinnett County Schools? Sheesh, with blogs like this, who needs Ambien?
Class of '98
September 16th, 2009
6:42 pm
We have ex-presidents accusing conservatives of racism, ACORN under fire, the health care debate rages, and we get this snooze-fest about Gwinnett County Schools?
Kyle, did they hire you as a conservative blogger with the caveat that you would never write anything that anyone actually wants to read?
Class of '98
September 16th, 2009
7:12 pm
Wow, four comments in 40 mintues, and three of them are by me.
Nothing stirs the pot like a scathing blog about Gwinnett County charter schools!!!
d
September 16th, 2009
11:26 pm
I think the problem is not with the charter concept, Gwinnett has two that it approved, but the fact that an appointed board overruled the ruling of an elected board. I can’t vote out the members of the Georgia Charter School Commission if I don’t like what they do, but I can actively campaign against the members of the Gwinnett County Board of Education if they don’t do what I want them to do or I feel they are wasting my tax dollars. I don’t have a problem with school choice, but don’t ask me to pay for your choice. I believe a fully funded public education system in Georgia can be the best in the nation, but the current governor has cut QBE funding every year since he took office. Basic economics will tell you that vouchers will only raise tuition at private schools so they are nothing but a tax-payer funded scholarship to people who don’t need it.
Jim
September 16th, 2009
11:41 pm
This action by GCPS is appalling but not at all surprising. One size fits all – that’s what they’re about.
Sp Ed Teacher
September 16th, 2009
11:58 pm
Ever look at the things Charter Schools do not have to do? Class size and Title 20 rights are waived. Also, how about Sp Ed? They have the right to only take the students they want; not what comes through the door like Public Schools. If my school system screened students like a Charter School, I would not have any students.
J.S. Mill
September 17th, 2009
8:12 am
To “d”: Wow, I bet your co-workers at the Georgia Association of Educators have already made reservations for lunch today to celebrate your late evening post. Because of the “show me the money” mentality of the government-run school systems, Gwinnett County and other school districts have been exposed for the monopoly-loving, tenure-loving, budget-busting, unaccountable dinosaurs they are. Please, just stop making excuses and COMPETE! You will feel better about yourself. I believe in democracy and local control also; however, no citizen group, charter group, or parent has a chance against an anti-charter local school board with a professional staff and well-paid internal and outside legal counsel. As for voting out a local school board member, are you kidding me? I would have a better chance winning a Mega-Millions jackpot. As for not wanting to pay for the choice made by parents to send their children to private schools, what do you think private school parents, by having to pay school taxes AND private school tuition, have been doing for decades? As for Kyle Wingfield, keep up the good work. The decision by Gwinnett County Schools to shut-down the State Charter Schools Commission is a critical development that needs to be fully debated.
X-Ivy Parent
September 17th, 2009
8:25 am
To Special Ed Teacher:
You statement is valid. Compare to apples to apples not apples to oranges. Gwinnett has the right and should stand their grounds. Lights,. Camera Action. Gwinnett need to consider the school for the county’s school of performing arts.
Jimmy62
September 17th, 2009
8:27 am
Not sure how you can say Duncan is a supporter of school choice. Didn’t he and Obama help kill the program in D.C.? Nothing I’ve seen from the two of them makes me think they want to let poor ghetto kids out of the ghetto. Like most liberals, they seem to want them trapped in bad schools with no way out and low expectations of a successful future.
charterteacher59
September 17th, 2009
8:58 am
Two things: to the teacher who said charter schools do not have to accept students with special needs, you are totally mistaken. Charter schools cannot discriminate against anyone. Maybe you are thinking of magnet schools–which charter schools are not. Also to JImmy62, what do you mean Duncan and Obama helped “kill the program in DC?” As a former teacher in a charter school in DC, I believe there are more charter schools in DC (and think about its size) than in Georgia (not counting those new charter districts here). And more charters are being established there. See http://www.dcpubliccharter.com. And your comments about letting poor ghetto kids out of the ghetto are totally without base. The majority of students in DC’s charter schools are of minority ethnicities and children from low income homes. Jimmy62–get your facts straight.
David Axelfraud
September 17th, 2009
9:04 am
Well, this is good news for conservatives and Rush Limbaugh. Looks like we were right after all.
Poooooooooooooooot
David Axelfraud
September 17th, 2009
9:05 am
The Stimulus Didn’t Work
The data show government transfers and rebates have not increased consumption at all.
By JOHN F. COGAN, JOHN B. TAYLOR AND VOLKER WIELAND
Is the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 working? At the time of the act’s passage last February, this question was hotly debated. Administration economists cited Keynesian models that predicted that the $787 billion stimulus package would increase GDP by enough to create 3.6 million jobs. Our own research showed that more modern macroeconomic models predicted only one-sixth of that GDP impact. Estimates by economist Robert Barro of Harvard predicted the impact would not be significantly different from zero.
Now, six months after the act’s passage, we no longer have to rely solely on the predictions of models. We can look and see what actually happened.
Consider first the part of the package that consists of government transfers and rebates. These include one-time payments of $250 to eligible individuals receiving Social Security, Supplemental Security Income, veterans benefits or railroad retirement benefits and temporary reductions in income-tax withholding for a refundable tax credit of up to $400 for individuals and $800 for families with incomes below certain thresholds. These payments, which began in March of this year, were intended to increase consumption that would help jump-start the economy. Now that a good fraction of these actions have taken place, we can assess their impact.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204731804574385233867030644.html
Your morning jolt: From the judge who slapped down a 'birther' suit | Political Insider
September 17th, 2009
9:15 am
[...] Some opinion: Kyle Wingfiled says the Gwinnett school system is trying to cow charters. [...]
Cutty
September 17th, 2009
9:18 am
@Jimmy62- Do your research. Duncan increased the number of Charter schools in Chicago threefold while he was at the helm of the school system there. And what about the poor rural white kids in Georgia? Way more of them than the ‘poor ghetto’ kids.
pd
September 17th, 2009
9:20 am
Yes, I agree Kyle. The government should publically fund a choice for education. In this case, two choices. It should be open to all. I apply this same logic to Healthcare. The government should fund a choice. The private schools can exist along with the public ones. The private insurance companies can exist alongside the public choice.
Churchill's MOM
September 17th, 2009
9:20 am
I am bored with the Race thing and even more so with ACORN, so it’s good you are addressing a real Conservative issue. Up here in Athens our public schools are a failure so our 2 childeren go to Athens Academy. Our kids are smart enough to get in and we can afford for them to get a good education, For 85% of our area there is no option but a failed public system, Georgia needs more Charter schools and a richer funding program for them.
J.S. Mill
September 17th, 2009
9:20 am
Charterteacher59,
Thank-you for your service as a teacher. By the way, Jimmy62 does have his facts straight, you are just confused about to what he was referring. Barack Obama and the Congressional Democrats killed federal funding for a D.C. opportunity scholarship program that was providing low-income, mostly Black, families with the ability to send their children to the public or PRIVATE schools of their choice. They did this in spite of a recent report evidencing that the program has improved academic performance (the study is featured in this month’s issue of EducationNext magazine). Jimmy62 is right to this extent- President Obama has chosen to educate his own daughters at an elite Washington DC private school; however, because of his ties to the teachers’ unions, he can never permit less fortunate families to exercise the same choice he did.
Kyle Wingfield
September 17th, 2009
9:46 am
(Cross-posting this comment that I also put under the ACORN post)
Public Option Now: The reason your comments are going to moderation is because you were posting some false and malicious accusations about specific people. There’s nothing “substantive” about that. Your comments will continue to go through moderation before being posted until we decide that we can trust you not to post such accusations in the future. And if we ever make that decision, and if you subsequently break that trust, you will be banned from this blog. It’s that simple.
The same goes for everyone else.
I’m also taking down comments from a poster using a handle that begins “Midtown liberal” and includes a slur.
These blogs are for substantive discussions, not for a few people to demonstrate what poor taste they have. As of next week I will have had two weeks to observe how people participate here. Y’all can expect some ground rules from me as early as Monday.
woodie
September 17th, 2009
10:19 am
Taxpayers should not have to fund charter schools. We fund public schools. Anything else should be funded privately. I’m with the school board on this. If you want an elitest system, you fund it yourself.
Gregg
September 17th, 2009
10:27 am
@ pd: that argument makes too much sense for them to comprehend. They argue for the very points of breaking up monopolies, yet when it comes to helathcare they want no part of government intervention. It is this type of hypocrite and tell me what to think attitude on why both side cannot agree. It is crazy how the support each other (both parties) when their member is wrong. John Wilson for example. We elect these people to represent us REPECTFULLY and when they do not perform so we allow it. We allow them to have better healthcare for their entire families while they cannot agree for the scraps for us.
Gregg
September 17th, 2009
10:29 am
@ Churchill’s MOM: so you are all for having an option even if you choose not to excerise it. Just not when it comes to healthcare.
Gregg
September 17th, 2009
10:32 am
@ J.S. Mill: Where would you have the PRESIDENT send his kids? to an inner city school, where there would be more secret service men than teachers? Be realistic. The man is RICH even if he were not the president his kids would go to Private school. Secondly he opposed it because they felt it was an Affirmative action type and that all student should have equal access. Isn’t that something you preach on the conservative side.
woodie
September 17th, 2009
10:47 am
You have an option now. You always have. Pay for a private school education for your child or send them to public school. Taxpapers fund public schools. Taxpayers support the school board to oversee this. If you want better schools and you want taxpayers to fund it, then support the school board. That’s their job. As a taxpayer I do not want to fund any private school. I do not want anybody with a hammer and nail to put up a shingle on my dime. What’s next? You want a private military? Maybe a private war? A private state? This is an absurd argument.
SBC Charter Roundup 5 – Schools Building Communities
September 17th, 2009
10:57 am
[...] charter schools (North County Times) Colo. — Making choices in education (Denver Post) Ga. — Gwinnett school system tries to cow charters (Atlanta Constitution Journal) Mass. — The next chapter on education reform (Boston Globe) Mass. [...]
Marcos
September 17th, 2009
11:09 am
It never ceases to amaze me how much conservatives hate public education. As if they all attended elite private schools! What a joke. In hating teachers, administrators and public education, you are in essence hating America and all it stands for. Our public education system has been the backbone of this great country for generations. And if it is broken, then let’s all work together to fix it… not just run away like scared little children. This sort of thinking just points out that conservatives LOVE to love America but will not do the hard work it takes to maintain the America they claim to love.
Churchill's MOM
September 17th, 2009
11:12 am
Gregg 10:29 am
My husband is a doctor, he wants a private & public option. He spends 2+(nonbillable) hours a day talking to idiots from the various insurance companies.
David Axelfraud
September 17th, 2009
11:37 am
Kyle, the democrats are always confusing. Just look at whats going on right now. They control the House and the Senate yet they are screaming about Republicans getting in the way. Their own party is in total chaos and yet somehow its Rush Limbaughs fault. Oh, and you and I are both racists because Jimmy Peanut Carter said we are. Go figure.
Kyle Wingfield
September 17th, 2009
11:48 am
Marcos and Woodie: Charter schools *are* public schools. They are publicly funded. They just aren’t run by the same people who run *other* public schools.
And, Marcos, if supporting charter schools means that “conservatives hate public education,” does that also mean that President Obama, another supporter of charter schools, “hates public education”? This is one way to “fix it,” not to “run away.”
algonquin J. Calhoun
September 17th, 2009
11:51 am
Kyle, you’re not helping the charter schools by mentioning that they can be helpful to under-privileged children. To many of these mouth breathers, under-privileged can only mean one thing-black kids! charter schools could help so many children and could bring Georgia out of the dark ages it has always inhabited educationally. This, however, is not a progressive state. So many of your readers fancy themselves patriots but it’s impossible to be patriotic if you don’t support education of our children-all of them! I teach in the university system of Georgia and I can tell you that the kids I’m getting can not write at all. it’s too late to fix those kids. It has to start long before they get to me.
Kyle Wingfield
September 17th, 2009
11:57 am
As for the health-reform comparisons: There is a big difference between taking existing government spending and using it in a different way without increasing it — as with charter schools — and adding hundreds of billions of dollars a year in new government spending — as with a public health-insurance option.
And the conceit that you can only support either the Democrats’ plan or the status quo is getting real old, considering all the other proposals out there.
algonquin J. Calhoun
September 17th, 2009
12:25 pm
Since you brought it up, I’ll comment about healthcare Kyle. Something really needs to be done! Six years ago today, I had surgery to remove my gallbladder and a cancerous kidney. I had insurance but still went broke. Politicians, like Wilson, are in the pocket of the insurance companies and health care industry. Consequently, they represent those special interests and not the people. Have you ever seen posters that ask for donations so a person can have a needed transplant? That’s unacceptable here in this country! Every citizen should be given good medical treatment when it is needed and every child should receive a good education. I don’t oppose the concept of charter schools but the overall quality of education for our kids has to improve or the United States will become a nation of dunces! We can’t allow the entirety of the country to become as backward and incestuous as most of Georgia is.
Chris Broe
September 17th, 2009
1:35 pm
Anyone read Bookman today? Style over content. He hacks someone else’s voice and thus, with no earned structural accomplishment, his point carries no more weight than an emoticon. In today’s instance, Bookman’s point is better expressed by the emoticon which depicts the face of a guy nursing a gas bubble.
BOOKMAN!!!
As for the money angle, the Gwinnett system claims in part that the state’s grant of some $850,000 to Ivy Preparatory Academy risks “irreparable harm” to other county students.
Lyle Kingfield: Don’t start a paragraph with a preposition. It is sheer torture to wade through the awkward phrasing that follows. Most readers will simply give up. We all have too much to read. Please consider that you have readers with limited time and patience.
Also, Lyle, be brief for the same reasons you have made a resolution to stop torturing readers: limited time and patience. Get to the point. Stop trying to be cute, clever, stylish. Example? Bookman’s “Five alarm Tizzy” metaphor today. He didn’t earn that with any other firefighting reference either before or after. Bookman writes mostly just a bunch of gas that goes stale as it collects into a uncomfortably-unexpelled bubble. That’s bookman: a methane-hoarding, troll coddling menace to journalism, justice, and the American Way.
Jimmy62
September 17th, 2009
1:52 pm
People who corrected me were absolutely right. Obama and Duncan didn’t kill Charter schools in DC. They killed the voucher program in DC. Which means there are lots of kids in bad schools who can’t afford any other choice. They are trapped. And that’s not just in DC, that’s all over. Nor is it just urban areas. We have a taxpayer supported education system that has some good schools and a lot more not so good schools, and we trap our low income population in the bad ones with no way out. And the “elites” kill ideas that might free them from their shackles of substandard education. If the public school system was doing such a great job, then why are we so behind other countries?
Allow education funds to be used at the school of a parent’s choice. And when no one wants to go to the bad schools, they will either have to improve or shut down and allow their students to go elsewhere. It’s called competition, and it makes things better. What we have now is a virtual monopoly due to the economics of spending plenty on taxes, then having to spend that over again to send your kid to a decent school. It means you don’t really have a choice, and that seems to be just the way the liberal leadership and various teachers’ organizations like it. I don’t understand how people can call me racist for not liking Obama’s monopartisan health care plan, but think of themselves as not racist even though they support anything and everything that will trap lower income students (not just black, of course, but primarily so in urban situations) in crappy schools.
William
September 17th, 2009
2:41 pm
Is it the lack of education or the chaos that have public schools in the public forum. Regardless, I have to pay taxes to maintain public schools when I should have the choice to direct my taxes to a private school that reflects my values and customs.
Public schools do not promote hardly any of my beliefs and mores. One person can say that offends me and generations of customs and lifestyles are in jeopardy. So much for freedom when it applies to only a few. That is what public schools have done to so many. Public schools rejected the mainstream and married itself to the few who gained government support.
I want my taxes supporting the type of education I want for my kids and not what the government claim my kids should have. I am for charter schools and more of them. I hope public schools get exactly what they deserve–empty classrooms.
Current Ivy Prep Parent
September 17th, 2009
2:47 pm
I am a current Ivy Prep and I have been for the past two years. I LOVE Ivy Prep. Ivy Prep does wonders for its students. Let me just speak on behalf of my child. My child has been part of Gwinnett County school system since grade K. I have not been pleased with the district every since. Because of that I elected to send my child to Ivy Prep and other students to another local charter school. My child did not pass the CRCT 4 grade and 5 grade and had to attend summer school every year. But not when she started at Ivy Prep and let me remind you, she is a Special Ed student. This past year my child passed the CRCT and did not have to attend summer school for the first time in years. My child finally enjoys going to school and is talking about college. She NEVER enjoyed school. It just angers me that a district would try and shut down a school that is doing wonders for students and has some of the highest scores in the state. If you dont believe me check it for your self. Parents should have the right to chose where our children go to school and why should my tax paying dollars not follow my child where she is being educated. I love ivy Prep and I hope more people will start to realize what a great school it is. Parents who left last year were poison to the school and not good people at all and tried to keep up mess within our parent community.
New To Ivy Prep
September 18th, 2009
3:56 pm
My child attended GCPS since kindergarten and has been under an IEP since 3rd grade. This past spring even though she didn’t pass the CRCT she wasn’t allowed to attend summer school because the space had to be given to a student not under an IEP! My concern was any child that needed summer school should have been allowed to attend. I transferred my child to Ivy this year and BECAUSE of the after school enrichment along with 2 periods of math instruction DAILY she is grasping the concepts better than when she attended GCPS. Now how does a school with a minute fraction of the GCPS budget accomplish this? Maybe Gwinnett needs to take a look at this school model. At the end of the day as parents we want our children to be successful, productive, and academically prepared to meet the increasingly complex challenges of tomorrow. What sense does it make for our children to graduate HS unprepared for the rigors of college and life? Just ask any professor who has to teach some of these kids coming out of HS totally unprepared. Sadly, we then wonder why the US is falling behind other countries in producing the best and the brightest. For the vast majority of Americans that are unable to afford private school to thoroughly equip their children public school is the only option. The public school methods of teaching/inspiring our children MUST change.
MarkRight
October 24th, 2009
4:30 pm
Interesting story as for me. It would be great to read something more about that topic.