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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Leave a Comment 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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Leave a Comment Politics threaten courts via retention elections
We believe decisions in the Gannon case will also be used as a reason to try to change the makeup of the Supreme Court through retention elections in 2016. Kansas public school advocates also need to be court advocates. “But they are also being watched closely, both inside and outside of Kansas, for another reason. A majority of the jurists hearing those appeals — six of the 14 Court of Appeals judges, and five of the seven Supreme Court justices — will be up for retention in the 2016 elections. And some experts are already predicting those elections...
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