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Warnings about “choice” from Ohio

Here’s the latest warning on the charter industry from Ohio. It’s a long read but an important one. We should learn from their mistakes. “School vouchers, tuition tax credits, education savings plans and other money-follows-the-child schemes are also a significant threat to the existence of a viable common school system but, the focus of this presentation will be on the implications of the charter industry. The charter choice argument is a hoax. “People don’t want choice; they want a high quality thorough and efficient common school system. The charter choice in Ohio is typically of lower quality than...
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Charters’ mismanagement of funds cause for concern

Yesterday in the K-12 Student Success Committee hearing, we heard testimony that both implied and explicitly said that Kansas should expand charter authorizers beyond districts. This study highlights some of our concerns. “Four major policy concerns are identified: 1. A substantial share of public expenditure intended for the delivery of direct educational services to children is being extracted inadvertently or intentionally for personal or business financial gain, creating substantial inefficiencies; 2. Public assets are being unnecessarily transferred to private hands, at public expense, risking the future provision of “public” education; 3. Charter school operators are growing highly endogenous,...
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Chains running many of America’s charter schools

  Many of these are not laboratories of innovation testing methods that could be applied to public schools. They are chains taking money from the states in which they operate. Read more here: https://schoolfinance101.wordpress.com/2015/12/07/picture-post-week-follow-up-on-whos-running-americas-charter-schools/?utm_content=buffer0175a&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer...
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Misleading funding numbers used, but auditor finds association between spending and outcomes

During the K-12 Student Success meeting yesterday, Rep. Lunn cited the KPI-pushed statistic that Kansas is around 4th in the country in its school funding from the state general fund. What he failed to recognize was that in the early 90s, Kansas made a conscious decision to make school funding less reliant on local property taxes and more on state level funding, and that now the 20 mills raised locally (that accounting change comes in at $586.5 million) is counted as state funding. He also looked at statewide test scores without acknowledging increases in Kanas ELL students and...
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