'School choice' and public support of charter schools faces rural resistance even in Republican-controlled statehouses

"School choice," a favorite issue for many conservatives, especially religious ones who want public support for private schools, has had a hard time getting traction in some states because of opposition from rural legislators.

The Kentucky General Assembly authorized privately organized but publicly recognized charter schools years ago, but only this year did it provide funding for them, and by a very narrow margin in the state House. Rural lawmakers saw little if any benefit for their communities, which are unlikely sites for charter schools.

Much the same is happening in Texas, Brian Lopez reports for the Texas Tribune: "Rep. Gary VanDeaver, a Republican whose district includes 30 rural school districts, is still unconvinced. He was one of several lawmakers who helped kill school-choice legislation in 2017. He said one of the concerns he’s hearing from parents is that they’re paying property taxes, which fund public schools, but have opted for either home schooling or sending their kids to private school." He told Lopez, “I prefer to reduce their property taxes, so they have the option of spending that money any way they choose, whether it be alternative education choices, saving for college or purchasing a new car.”

Lopez reports, "Conservative efforts to pass school choice measures have failed largely because there are few private schools or charter schools as alternatives outside the state’s larger urban areas. Also, the public school systems are a large economic and employment driver for most small towns. . . . VanDeaver has been informed that the religious private schools in his area are uninterested in public money. He also worries about the damage to the local public school district a voucher program could cause."

Education roundup: School choice debate heats up in rural Oklahoma; how policy can help rural schools thrive

Here's a trio of recent stories about issues in rural education:

School choice is a hot-button issue in many parts of the country. NPR affiliate KOSU in Oklahoma City explores how an out-of-state interest group poured money into attacking a rural state legislator over a controversial school-choice bill. Read more here.

In the third part of a series on rural education, The Daily Yonder explores how education policy and other initiatives can help rural schools overcome challenges. Read more here.

Education Secretary Miguel Cardona sat down for a "fireside chat" earlier this week with members of the National Indian Education Association, who were in Washington, D.C., for the organization's annual Capitol Hill Week. Read more here.

Fact-checking President Trump's RNC acceptance speech

CNN did not mince words in its fact-check of President Trump's speech yesterday at the Republican National Convention.

"President Donald Trump is a serial liar and he serially lied during his speech accepting the Republican nomination," Daniel Dale and others report. "CNN counted more than 20 false, exaggerated or misleading claims from Trump on Thursday night. That's in addition to a number of falsehoods from other speakers. Trump's dishonesty touched on a range of topics, from the economy to his administration's performance during the coronavirus pandemic. Some of Trump's most egregious false claims were directed at Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden."

Here's some of what CNN's fact-checkers caught:

• Trump suggested Biden wants to remove the border wall, but Biden has specifically said he will not, and will only stop further construction.
• Trump said Biden's immigration plan calls for open borders. It does not.
• Trump said 300 miles of border wall has been built during his administration, but that's not 300 miles of wall where no barriers existed before. About 275 miles of barriers have been built along the U.S.-Mexico border during the Trump administration, but only five miles of barriers were erected in areas where none had existed.
• Trump claimed he had "very good information" that China wants his foe to win because Biden would help its agenda more. CNN acknowledges that it doesn't know what information Trump may have, but a recent intelligence assessment reported that China wanted Trump to lose because he was "unpredictable," and because of the trade war.
• Biden opposes school choice and wants to close all charter schools, Trump claimed. The claim about charter schools is an exaggeration; the Democratic platform only recommends barring for-profit charters from receiving federal funding. The claim about school choice is debatable, since the phrase is so nebulous. Biden and his school task force oppose vouchers for private schools, but he supports some alternatives to standard public schools.
• Trump claimed he has done more for Black Americans than any other president since Abraham Lincoln. At the very least, President Lyndon Johnson's advocacy and signing of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act dwarfed anything Trump has done, CNN says.
• Trump said he "took on Big Pharma" and signed orders that "will massively lower" the cost of prescription drugs. It's unclear whether executive orders Trump signed in July will ever take effect or lower drug prices. Also, prices have continued to rise throughout the Trump administration, though the growth rate has slowed by some measures.
• Trump pledged that he and the Republican Party will "always, and very strongly, protect patients with pre-existing conditions." However, his administration is actively trying to dismantle the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which does offer such protections, without providing an alternative plan.
• Trump made a number of misleading or exaggerated claims about his administration's record on the coronavirus pandemic.

The Washington Post's fact-checkers also weighed in:

• A Biden-appointed task force calls for abolishing cash bail, "immediately releasing 400,000 criminals onto the streets and into your neighborhoods," Trump said. Biden's task force said that "poverty is not a crime" and that Democrats want to eliminate cash bail because no one should be imprisoned for failing to pay fines or fees. However, in states that have moved to abolish cash bail, pre-trial defendants haven't been released—including in New Jersey, where Republican Chris Christie, a Trump ally, led a coalition to abolish cash bail. 
• Biden would abolish American production of coal, shale oil and natural gas, which would devastate economies of states that rely on those industries, Trump claimed. Biden's energy plan doesn't call for the end of fossil-fuel production. It does call for the U.S. to expand low- and zero-carbon technologies and offset fossil fuel emissions by other means. Biden has said he will allow hydraulic-fracturing operations to continue but wouldn't grant new permits on federal lands.
• Trump claimed he passed "Veterans Choice," a program in which veterans can get VA-funded health care from private providers. That's misleading; Obama signed Veterans Choice into law in 2014, Trump merely updated it in 2019. 

DeVos provides few details on Trump administration push to reopen schools in the fall

School districts are grappling with how or whether to reopen schools in the fall, and though the Trump administration has called for reopening, it hasn't said how to accomplish that. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos sat for interviews Sunday on CNN and Fox News, but offered little clarity on the matter.

"Pressed on how schools in areas with high rates of the coronavirus should protect children and communities, she provided few details," Evie Blad reports for Education Week. "Also unclear: the details of repeated threats made by DeVos and President Donald Trump to withhold federal funds from schools that don't reopen, and exactly what a satisfactory school reopening would look like."

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recommended that schools limit bus riders, ensure that students wear masks, and space desks six feet apart, but DeVos stressed to CNN's Dana Bash that those are only recommendations, that no two schools are the same, and said that education leaders are smart enough to figure out how to tailor CDC prevention and outbreak-containment guidelines to each individual school, Blad reports.

"Pressed by Fox's Chris Wallace on why the administration would threaten schools' funding during the pandemic, DeVos reiterated previous statements that seemed to allude to a push for a private school choice option," Blad reports. DeVos, who has been a strong proponent of private education, told Wallace: "American investment is a promise to students and their families . . . If schools aren't going to reopen and fulfill that promise, they shouldn't get the funds. Then give it to the families to decide to go to a school that is going to meet that promise."

Wallace pointed out that DeVos didn't have the authority to redirect federal funds authorized by Congress; DeVos said she is considering "all options," Blad reports.

Alabama nixes controversial charter school just before opening, the first time the state has shut down a charter

"A controversial public charter school in south Alabama met its end today, two months before opening," Trisha Powell Crain reports for Alabama.com. After a half-hour closed session, the Alabama Public Charter School Commission voted to revoke the charter for Woodland Preparatory School in Chatom "for failing to meet conditions of pre-opening, lack of adherence to generally accepted financial standards, and failing to establish community support for the school."

That was two weeks after a hearing in which school representatives explained at a hearing why they haven't been able to meet the commission's conditions. The school was first approved in May 2018 and scheduled to open this August, but in February the commission voted to begin the revocation process, Crain reports. The move marks the first time the state commission has revoked a school's charter. There are currently four public charter schools operating in the state under the commission's authority.

The for-profit rural school, first approved in May 2018, has been beset with controversy since the beginning, plagued by local worries that the charter would drain tax money from local public schools. Locals were also concerned that a national organization that evaluates charter school applications gave the for-profit charter was given a failing grade. Some locals were also worried because the school would have been part of an informal network of charter schools run operated by followers of a Turkish Muslim preacher living in Pennsylvania. 

Farmers can nominate a rural school district for a $15,000 STEM grant; deadline is April 1

Are you a farmer? Want to help support your local school district? If so, you can nominate them for a $15,000 grant to help fund classroom STEM projects by April 1. 

The annually awarded grant is available through the America's Farmers Grow Rural Education program, funded by Bayer. Nominated school districts can submit a grant proposal and compete with other schools within each state. 

Private and independent schools are not eligible for the grant. Public schools are eligible, including charter schools that are categorized as public schools by the National Center for Education Statistics. The winners will be notified in early August. Click here for more information.

Proposed rural Alabama charter school faces opposition, partly because its manager is a foreign-born Muslim

Flyer produced by charter opponent and included in local newspaper in May
(Courtesy of Alabama Media Group; click on the image to enlarge it)

There are several reasons many locals in Chatom, Alabama, oppose a proposed charter school that state officials recently approved. They worry it will cost public schools enrollment and taxpayer funding; and a nonprofit that reviews charter organizations for the state gave Woodland Preparatory School a thumbs down, saying it didn't have a good curriculum or financial plan, and not enough information was available about the company that will operate the school.

There's another reason many object to the school: The manager is a Muslim with possible ties to a controversial cleric, Trisha Powell Crain reports for Alabama Media Group, comprising the Advance Publications newspapers in the state (including nearby Mobile): "Retired teacher Wayne Blackwell, among others, made his concerns clear in a letter to the editor of the Washington County News in March. 'It personally concerns me that Dr. Soner Tarim,' Blackwell wrote, 'is from Turkey and is of the Muslim faith.'"

Tarim told Crain that opening the school "is an excellent opportunity for me to prove that in a small community where there is no option, no choice, parents are fleeing to find a proper education outside of this county . . . This is the place that I can prove again -- one more time -- that the charter school model can work." Tarim owns charter school company Unity School Services, based in Sugar Land, Texas. He previously co-founded and was chief executive of charter-school chain Harmony Public Schools, which "critics say is part of an informal network of scores of charter schools operated by followers of Fethullah Gülen, a Muslim preacher from Turkey who lives in seclusion in Pennsylvania and is wanted by the Turkish government," Valerie Strauss reports for The Washington Post.

"A number of schools in the unofficial network have been investigated over a period of years by state and federal agencies amid allegations regarding hiring practices that favor Turkish nationals, abuse of the H-1B visa process and preferences in the awarding of contracts to related Turkish businesses," Strauss reports. "Former employees have alleged that they were required to contribute some of their salaries to the Gülen political movement, although representatives of Gülen have denied it over the years. Tarim has repeatedly denied that Harmony is part of a Gülen network of charter schools."

Meanwhile, Woodland Prep is having a hard time keeping board members and convincing local parents to enroll their children because of intense pressure from charter opponents. Most recently, Ford dealership owner Gene Brown resigned in early July. (Brown gained nationwide attention in June for a promotion that offered a gun, a flag and a Bible with every car purchase.) "Brown has since shifted his support. Last week, his Ford dealership's Facebook page said he donated a 'large sum to the athletic department' at one of the county's schools," Crain reports.

Local opposition has stopped the school from even being built: "The Montgomery contractor hired to build the school told the state commission that workers have walked off the job after opponents threatened that they'd never again find work in Washington County," Crain reports. It's unclear when or if the school will open. It's suspected that only about 50 children are enrolled so far; without at least 200, it can't open, Crain reports.

Turmoil surrounding planned school in rural Alabama illustrates growing backlash to charter schools

Washington County
(Wikipedia map)

A controversy in rural Alabama illustrates a growing backlash to charter schools.

State officials have approved a charter school called Woodland Preparatory School to open in Chatom, the Washington County seat, even though Chatom's mayor said he doesn't want the school and doesn't know anyone else who does. Residents worry that Woodland Prep will drain tax money from local public schools, which are performing above the state average, Valerie Strauss reports for The Washington Post.

"That’s a key reason that charters — which are publicly funded but established and operated by nonprofit and for-profit companies outside traditional school systems — are facing growing opposition after enjoying bipartisan support for many years," Strauss reports. "Not only has it become clear that charters are not a panacea for public education — as supporters had claimed — but also many school systems have found they are losing millions of dollars from their education budgets when public dollars are directed to charters. And that is happening even though the fixed costs for traditional public school systems have not changed."

There are other concerns with Woodland Prep: "A national organization that evaluates charter school applications gave the thumbs-down on Woodland’s application, saying it did not meet educational and other standards benchmarks," Strauss reports. The school's financial model is murky too: "It’s sponsored by a new nonprofit organization while at the same time being built by a for-profit Utah company. It will be operated by a for-profit Texas company headed by a man who founded a controversial charter school network in the Lone Star State. That company is contracted to receive 15 percent of all gross revenue received during the school year from federal, state and local sources."

The Alabama Public Charter School Commission approved the school even after the nonprofit National Association of Charter School Authorizers, which had a contract with the Alabama State Department of Education to review charter applications, gave the school the thumbs down, Strauss reports. The association wrote that Woodland didn't have a good curriculum, that not enough information was available about the company that will operate the school, and that the school's financial plan was inadequate.

The association found several other charter schools inadequate that were ultimately approved by the commission; the state department of education has since dropped its contract with the association, Strauss reports.

Writer cites four reasons why charter schools aren't a good rural fit, and one circumstance in which they might be

About 90 percent of the nation's charter schools are in urban areas, but school-choice advocates are eager to open more in rural areas. There are a few reasons that charter schools aren't a good fit in rural America, Peter Green writes for Forbes magazine.

For one thing, rural schools are at the heart of their communities. "In rural and small-town areas, grown adults still identify themselves by what high school they graduated from. Sporting events, school concerts, art displays -- these are attended by all sorts of people who are not actual parents of the participants," Green writes. "Launching a charter school in this setting is about as welcome as having a guy move into the house next door and inviting your children to call him 'Dad'."

Along those lines, rural communities aren't always welcome to outsiders, especially overconfident ones out to "fix" rural America. "Every small town can tell a story about some city big shot who rolled into town and thought he was going to institute sweeping changes, only to fall flat on his face," Green writes. "Charter operators have a history of bypassing the local community they enter, of doing charters to the locals instead of with them."

Also, rural public schools are almost all underfunded already. If a charter school lures students (and their state funding) away, public schools in the area would likely be hurt.

Conversely, there are reasons charter advocates might not want to go into rural communities. It's more profitable for charters to launch in high-density population areas, since students come with state funding. And rural areas tend not to have the kind of wealthy backers ready to help finance charters that urban areas do, Greene writes.

All that being said, charters can be a good fit in rural areas under certain circumstances. "The small community of Tidioute, Pennsylvania, lost its public school due to budget cuts in the larger district of which they were a part. So to keep the heart of their community intact and their children's education local, they re-opened their local school as a charter school, operated and controlled by local folks," Greene writes. "It is the one approach to rural chartering that makes sense--a local school under local control created to meet a local need. That's a good charter fit."

Rural charter school splits Oklahoma town, may test state's authority to override local school decisions

Seminole, Okla. (Wikipedia map)

An Oklahoma businessman's success in opening a rural charter school over objections of the local school board could "test the popularity of charters in Oklahoma, and the role of the state in overruling community decisions," Caroline Preston reports for The Hechinger Report, an education journal. "More broadly, it’s a test case for whether these privately operated, publicly funded schools can open in small communities without eroding public education."

Paul Campbell and his family moved from Los Angeles to Oklahoma three years to aerospace manufacturing company Enviro Systems, but had a hard time finding qualified workers in Seminole, a town of 7,300 just east of Oklahoma City. He believed part of the problem was a school system that didn't prepare students for highly skilled labor, and thought he could offer the town a better choice, Preston reports.

At the Academy of Seminole, which opened this past fall to 29 freshmen and sophomores, Campbell has focused on career readiness from the beginning. He's brought in speakers from different careers, and each student is required to choose a career and do a semester-long project on it. That dovetails nicely with Oklahoma's new requirement that all students must develop a career plan in order to graduate.

It sounds like an easy sell in theory, since "Campbell’s can-do, pro-business attitude fits in with the ethos of this working class, Trump-supporting town," Preston reports. But his charter has divided the town since he proposed it. Supporters thought the charter could bring new employers and skilled workers to the town, and liked the school's emphasis on workforce preparation.

Critics worried it would take students and their state funding away, leaving only the poorest children at the town's underfunded public schools, Preston reports. They were also concerned that Campbell didn't have an education background and that his program didn't offer students opportunities they couldn't get from existing programs. And though the school focuses on workplace readiness, locals worried that it might be used to incubate workers for Campbell's company.

Campbell said he met with local school-board leaders several times to discuss how his company could help kids in the system but was rebuffed; board members say that's not accurate. After that, he said, he began planning his own school and submitted an application to the Seminole School District in August 2016 to open one of the state's first rural charters, Preston reports. The board twice voted unanimously to reject the application, but the state board overrode it.

Because rural charters are so rare -- only about 11 percent of the nation's 6,747 are rural -- it's been difficult to predict how this one affect the community. So far, "much of what inspired the charter’s supporters, and troubled its opponents, hasn’t yet come to pass," Preston reports. "The small size is good financial news for the Seminole district, which stands to lose between $3,500 to $9,000 in state funding for every student who departs for the charter. To critics, of course, the small enrollment is evidence that there was never much demand for a charter school in the first place. For his part, Campbell is pointedly unsympathetic to worries over the charter school’s financial impact on the district," His advice: "Adapt."

Charter school advocate: Rural schools can better succeed with freedom to choose different educational goals

Education pundit and charter-school proponent Michael McShane says policymakers and researchers can't improve rural education if they don't have a good understanding of it and the more than 9 million children who attend rural schools. McShane is research director of EdChoice, an organization dedicated to promoting school choice, and has just published a book examining rural education.

Modern education reform has not considered the unique needs of rural schools, instead using a one-size-fits-all approach that badly serves rural schools, McShane writes for Forbes, and says would-be rural school reformers should heed two tips.

The first is to focus on the strengths of rural communities to improve education, such as "leveraging trust, pride and cohesion." Rural communities have long-resented and resisted the efforts of urban dwellers who come to their towns and try to fix schools without understanding the communities. But building on rural communities' greater social cohesion is a better approach, McShane writes.

The second is to broaden the goals of education. In order to better prepare rural students for adulthood, schools shouldn't just try to improve math and reading scores on standardized tests. Many rural communities disagree on the best goals for students though. A good education often leads the best rural students to leave town for college and never come back, so some communities want to make sure there are jobs available in town and prepare students for them. Some communities want to make sure students have better schooling in technical or trade areas. Each community should have the freedom to decide for itself what the best goals for students are and how to accomplish that, McShane writes.

"What we can do is try to collect and disseminate as much information as possible so that those families, schools, and communities can make informed decisions about what courses and programs to offer," McShane writes. "We can create flexibility in funding streams that allow schools to offer as broad a range of courses and programs as they can so that each student can find the path most appropriate to his or her goals and abilities. And, we can work with both industry and institutions of higher education to make better links between K-12 schools and the opportunities that follow them so that fewer students fall through the cracks."

Committee increases education spending for 2019 budget, doesn't ban schools from using grant money for guns

A committee of House and Senate members struck a deal Sept. 13 that would increase funding to the U.S. Department of Education by $581 million and give more funding to programs for vocational education, special education, Head Start and charter schools. The committee agreed to set total spending for education at almost $71.5 billion in fiscal 2019. It did not ban schools from using Every Student Succeeds Act grants to pay for firearms or firearms training, as Democrats wanted.

"In general, the spending deal rejects the Trump administration's fiscal 2019 proposal that calls for slashing the department's overall budget, the elimination of several programs, and the creation of school choice initiatives," Andrew Ujifusa reports for Education Week. "The budget deal does rescind $600 million in previously appropriated reserve funding for Pell grants. If you include that figure in the calculations about decline or growth in spending, then the deal would keep Education Department funding virtually flat compared to current levels. The agreement must now be approved by both the full House and Senate" before going to President Trump.

Charter schools reluctant to open in rural N.C.; online-only charters may not help, as Pa. shows

"One of the goals in erasing [North Carolina's] charter-school limit was for the schools to be able to open in rural counties. Yet more than six years after the legislature removed the cap on the number of charter schools, 40 of 100 counties still have no brick-and-mortar charter," Lynn Bonner reports for The News & Observer in Raleigh.

State leaders are promising to fix that. Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Forest says he's trying to bring more charters to rural areas. And Dave Machado, director of the state Office of Charter Schools, told Bonner the same thing. Both acknowledged the difficulty in luring charters to rural, high-poverty areas. Forest told Bonner that rural and poor areas are less attractive because charters would have to spend more to provide student support services. Machado told Bonner that per-pupil spending is lower in rural counties. That matters because charter schools get a share of county education funds.

Some organizations are trying to bring more charters to rural counties. "The Carolina Small Business Development Fund announced in May that it is offering up to $5 million in loans to charter and private schools that want to expand. The fund is a community development financial institution that focuses on rural businesses and those owned by women or minorities. Parents for Educational Freedom in North Carolina will review applicants and pass its recommendations to the lender," Bonner reports.

Some have championed online charter schools as an alternative to brick-and-mortar charters, but that approach is problematic. For one thing, rural areas often lack reliable, inexpensive internet access necessary for online schools. And too, the success rate of such ventures is questionable. "In Pennsylvania, an early adopter where more than 30,000 kids log into virtual charter schools from home most days, the graduation rate is a dismal 48 percent. Not one virtual charter school meets the state’s “passing” benchmark. And the founder of one of the state’s largest virtual schools pleaded guilty to a tax crime last year," Kimberly Hefling reports for Politico.

"The state’s 14 virtual charter schools have flourished in rural communities over the last 15 years — so much so that Pennsylvania, along with Ohio and California, now account for over half the enrollment in the nation’s full-time virtual charters, according to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools," Hefling reports. "But as the virtual schools have expanded, so have questions about their effectiveness. Large swaths of Pennsylvania kids leaving a brick-and-mortar school for one of the virtual charter alternatives went to one with lower math and reading performance, according to research based on the 2009-2010 school year compiled by the Pennsylvania General Assembly’s Center for Rural Pennsylvania."