When Opinions Get It Wrong (Again)

Filed in Education by on October 18, 2016

In my initial post 2 weeks ago about the lawsuit brought by Charters against  Christina School District and the Delaware DOE, I said that I would update. Well, here we go.

Rep. Kim Williams recently wrote a blog post in which she offers her thoughts on an opinion piece published by the News Journal and authored by Kendall Massett, executive director of the Delaware Charter Schools Network. Rep. Williams gets it right when she says

Charters want flexibility, the flexibility should not come at the expense of our children. There are Delaware charters that open their schools up to all students, anyone who wants to apply can apply and they will add them to their lottery. Then there are other charter schools that shut their doors, hang a sign “experience needed” – this needs to stop.

There’s much more to this than equitable access to charter schools though, as she also mentions. There must be equitable student funding as well, including a standardized per-student funding formula. Something difficult, if not impossible to achieve given the funding system in place right now. The fact that Delaware uses a public referendum system as a mechanism to increase local operating taxes for its school districts makes ‘standardization’ of any funding formula difficult. Take the ‘controversial’ district specific exclusions that Charters are suing Christina School District over.

When a charter receives local tax revenue from their students’ sending district, the amount is calculated based on the sending district’s local discretionary per-student expenses for the prior fiscal year. (i.e., Charters this year would be receiving funds calculated on the amounts spent by districts last year). Where this gets confusing is how much of the local operating expenses get included in the formula. In a typical year, the Delaware Department of Education determines specific “buckets” of funding for each District that are excluded from their total local operating expenses. Think of it like pre-tax deductions on your paycheck. Each pre-tax deduction reduces the amount you take home, which then lowers your income tax burden. Certain local operating expenses are excluded by State code, cafeteria expenses are one example. Other local operating expenses may also be excluded (or included) at the discretion of the Secretary of Education, the actual formula that calculates the amount to be sent to Charters to follow the students can only be changed by legislation.

So what do I mean by other excluded expenses?

When a Board of Education approves the request for an operating tax increase that specifies exactly what the new revenue will be used for within the District and voters approve it, that revenue shall only be used for the purposes described on the ballot as approved by the voters.

A specific example would be the operating tax increase request from Brandywine School District earlier this year to renovate 3 of their athletic fields with a new artificial turf surface. If it were approved, the revenue generated from the tax increase would only be used to renovate those 3 fields. No portion of the revenue would be included in the ‘local cost per student’ formula that determines the funding sent to charters for each student. Why? Because voters would have approved ballot language that stated an exact use for the money which, in this case, was for 3 of Brandywine School District’s athletic fields. This money, though local operating revenue, would have been a district specific exclusion, as mandated by voters.

Another example, About 13 years ago, Christina School District went to voters and asked for an operating tax increase. The increase had 2 sections. Section 1 was for general operations: salaries, benefits, supplies, inflation adjustments, etc. The general dollars that are used and factored in to the local cost per student formula that ultimately determines the monies that go to Charters.

Section 2, affectionately referred to the 10 cent referendum, asked voters to approve an additional 10 cent tax increase on top of Section 1 to be used exclusively for 4 District-specific initiatives:

  1. Phase-in of full day kindergarten for academically at-risk students.
  2. Expansion of services for Gifted and Talented Program.
  3. Expansion of services for Alternative Programs
  4. Technology Replacement Schedule

Section 2 was approved by voters 5,334 for, 2,431 against. My interpretation of this result is that voters approved the Section 2 10-cent tax increase to be used exclusively for what the District said it would be used for, and for nothing else. And starting July 1, 2004 the revenue generated from this increase was applied to these 4 initiatives within the Christina School District. For argument’s sake in 2004, the District had a assessed property value tax base of around $5 billion. (I don’t know the number for 2004, but in 2015 it was around $5.5 billion, so I’m rounding down). Remember that school tax rates are per $100 assessed value.

$5,000,000,000/100 = $50,000,000 taxable value. Assuming 100% collection, one year’s worth of the 10 cent referendum would generate $5 million in operating revenue for the District to use exclusively on those 4 restricted purposes. Do Charters get a cut of that $5 million? No. Why? Because voters didn’t approve that. If approved, would Charters have gotten a cut of the revenue for Brandywine’s turf fields? No. Why? Because voters wouldn’t have approved that either.

In the lawsuit, the Charters complain about “district specific exclusions” for Christina jumping from $700k to approximately $7 million in one year. Is the 10-cent referendum the cause of that? It is plausible. But I really have no idea. And I have no idea because the DOE is the entity that decides which buckets of revenue get excluded or included, and they (so far) have been entirely unwilling to share their methodology for defining ‘included’ and ‘excluded’ funds for each district. Does the total amount of Christina’s exclusions stick out like a sore thumb compared to neighboring districts? Yes. Why? I don’t know again because DOE is entirely unwilling to share their methodologies.

Elsewhere in the suit the Charters allege that Christina has been excluding funds without requesting formal DOE approval. Again note that DOE is the only entity that determines included or excluded funding. Can districts request specific funds to be considered excluded from local per-student funding calculations? Yes. Must they?  No. Because, again, DOE determines exclusion and inclusion criteria on their own.

Ms. Massett also states that the Department of Education violated the law by ‘reversing’ their earlier ‘decision’ on recalculating the charter school bills. Legally, the DOE must certify the bills sent to Districts by Sept 1, every year. This year, Secretary Godowsky changed his mind on the new “recalculated” charter bills after September 1st. So yes, that appears to be in conflict with the law. But. Every year Districts up and down the state complete and approve their annual budgets for the coming fiscal year in January with educated guesstimates of how much they will be spending and on what/whom and where. Charter schools included. Those budgets take effect July 1. So when a budget is approved in January 2016 for fiscal year 2017 and the Department of Education issues surprise new bills in August 2016 that drastically inflate the amount of money that districts should be sending to charters without advanced notice or explanation, I’d say that’s a problem. A problem compounded by the fact that DOE also changed the amount of money Districts were to send to Charters for the previous fiscal year and even further compounded by not sharing any methodology for HOW the new bills were calculated, just that they “corrected inconsistencies among districts” and suddenly Districts were on the hook for millions in new expenditures they had not budgeted for this year or last year.

I do agree that equitable per-student funding must a major education reform goal in Delaware. I do not agree that funding changes should be done at the last minute behind closed doors. I also do not believe that students ‘deserve’ to have funds follow them from Districts that were not authorized by voters to send the funds with the students, no matter what the Charter Network says. If voters tell you what they want you to spend their tax money on, you spend it as they directed.

The conspiracy theorist in me finds it very interesting that this legal challenge comes about in a year that has Charters that educate Christina School District resident students facing potentially significant funding reductions as a result of the $9 million budget cut in Christina last year. And that this scheming and legal plotting seemed to have begun a mere 48 hours after the County certified the Christina March referendum results. And, if you believe the various whispers and rumors (which I do) that Secretary Godowsky had no knowledge of the recalculated charter bills until after they dropped (I’m looking at you Dave Blowman and Kim Wheatley). And that a certain charter-friendly State Senator from Western Newark facing a Republican challenger sent emails to constituents blathering on about how Christina now has millions of additional dollars to spend thanks to the referendum. And that similar language also appeared in a letter from the Newark Charter Board President to Newark Charter parents. Newsflash, there are no ‘additional millions’. The “new” revenue restores most of what was cut the year before. You know, like teachers, paras, school supplies, sports. Which you would know Senator Sokola if you attended a Citizen’s Budget Oversight Committee meeting at all, ever.

Anyway, this is, of course, an ongoing story. And I haven’t even touched on their joke of an argument over Match Tax funds. Or Debt Service funds. Or that the suit is attempting to have the Court of Chancery freeze the local funds portion of Christina’s budget, preventing them from spending any of it on students in the District, in Charters, or Choiced out to other districts’ schools.

Disclaimer, I’m not sure how other DL contributors manage to post so often. I’m barely cranking out 1 post per month it seems. Work. Kids. Work. Sleep. Work. Meh. Tips on helping me to blog more frequently pls.

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About the Author ()

A dad, husband, and public education supporter. Small tent progressive/liberal. Christina School District Citizen's Budget Oversight Committee member, who knows a bit about a lot when it comes to the convoluted mess that is education funding in the State of Delaware.

Comments (41)

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  1. puck says:

    “There’s much more to this than equitable access to charter schools…”

    First of all I agree with your viewpoint. But “equitable access to charter schools” shouldn’t be the goal. Charter schools are inherently inequitable.

    The premium charter schools such as CSW and NCS teach a general academic college prep curriculum. That curriculum should be well supported in all our district schools and not walled off in some sanctuary with access denied to most.

    I’m undecided about some specialized charters like DMA for example. But in nearly every case, the programs served by charters should be housed in a TPS school instead. Anything less is naked white flight.

  2. Brian says:

    puck, your comment leads back to the original “intent” of charters in Delaware. Bastions of experimental education policies that, if proven to increase achievement (or other variable metrics) should be incorporated back into the District at large.

    So then I ask, what have our Charters discovered pertaining to increasing academic success in our public schools?

  3. puck says:

    Charters have no special methodology other than selective enrollment. And charters certainly have no success at teaching large numbers of disadvantaged students, which is the very challenge faced by districts. The less selective the charter, the lower its performance. Selective enrollment by definition is not transferable to TPS. If the charter law is intended for charters to improve education performance of the whole system, then hold charters accountable for that, not just what goes on inside their own walls.

  4. pandora says:

    I’m all for listing the costs of charter schools on the referendum ballot. Most people don’t understand that what they’re voting for may not happen due to existing and future charter schools. In fact, let’s put the charter school funding on it’s own line in the referendum. I can dream, can’t I?

  5. anonymous says:

    “Charters have no special methodology other than selective enrollment.”

    Not so. That’s the recipe for some. Others are challenged to fill their seats.

    Delaware’s problems with charters are to a large extent unique to Delaware. The state Board of Education never should have been in the business of granting charters; by doing so, it became, in effect, a new school district that had no means of funding itself.

    Red Clay does not have Christina’s funding problems because it chartered its own charter schools — the money forfeited by one district school goes mostly to the district’s own charters. Christina’s failure to take responsibility for the charters within its borders is the direct cause of the funding problem.

  6. Brian says:

    anon, I’d take a closer look at Red Clay’s finances if I were you. And their chartering structure. Ultimate chartering authority rests with the DOE, statewide. Red Clay (or any other district) cannot create a charter school without DOE approving the Charter.

    And while you’re poking around, you may find that the Charter issues aren’t really that unique to Delaware.

    Even in the case of Red Clay, the money following the student to the “district’s” charters generates the same deleterious effects on Traditional Red Clay Schools and Christina schools alike.

  7. puck says:

    “Others are challenged to fill their seats.”

    Which of these is doing well enough to emulate?

    “Delaware’s problems with charters are to a large extent unique to Delaware.”

    Any city other than Wilmington would have long ago annexed the ring of wealthy corporate office parks and homes that surround it (barred by DE law).

    “The state Board of Education never should have been in the business of granting charters; by doing so, it became, in effect, a new school district that had no means of funding itself.”

    well said – I never thought of it in those terms before. District-chartered schools are still inequitable, though.

  8. Brian says:

    pandora, I’d be all for including the approximate amount to be spent on Charters in ballot language. I’d also support removing Charter funding from District tax revenue altogether. If I thought the majority of taxpayers looked at their property tax bills in detail, I’d say line item them like Vo Techs.

    But then that creates another problem. Vo Techs are funded by legislative action. Legislative action got us into this mess with Charters. I don’t think I want legislators with exclusive control of Charter funding.

  9. Brian says:

    By the by, anon, I do agree that had Christina’s Board taken the bull by the horns 20, 15, 10, or 5 years ago rather than tut-tutting away Charter oversight inside their own District boundaries, the situation would likely be very different now.

  10. anonymous says:

    “District-chartered schools are still inequitable, though.”

    Everything in education is “inequitable,” because we insist on equality of outcomes, a logical impossibility. Yet that’s what NCLB insists upon.

    “Even in the case of Red Clay, the money following the student to the “district’s” charters generates the same deleterious effects on Traditional Red Clay Schools and Christina schools alike.”

    Really? Where’s the equivalent funding crisis in Red Clay? The only one looming on the horizon is the one that would throw the entire city of Wilmington onto Red Clay’s tax rolls.

    The part none of you seems to understand is that it’s a small constituency that wants to perpetuate traditional public schools. You are vastly outnumbered by people who either disagree with you or don’t care either way.

  11. anonymous says:

    “Vo Techs are funded by legislative action. Legislative action got us into this mess with Charters.”

    This is the sort of thing that shows me where the real concerns lie. The Vo-Tech problem has existed in this state since the dawn of busing — vo-techs (except Howard) were the first refuge for the white flight crew, and they have been poorly run (and operated as a job source for legislators too lazy to work) for 40 years. Once high-stakes testing started, they started cherry-picking students, too.

    In short, what charters are doing now went on in the vo-tech system unimpeded and unchallenged by parents for decades. Why? Because the money wasn’t being raised by referendum.

    The hard-to-escape conclusion: Nobody cared until they noticed their wallets were lighter.

  12. puck says:

    ” it’s a small constituency that wants to perpetuate traditional public schools.”

    No it’s a silent majority, based on enrollment. If TPS parents had the wherewithal for advocacy, TPS would be performing much better,and charters would be gone tomorrow.

  13. anonymous says:

    “No it’s a silent majority, based on enrollment.”

    Now you’re equating opting for the default setting with support. That’s simply not true. Most parents in two-job families take the path of least resistance. Having children in the traditional public schools is not a sign of approval of how they’re run.

    You also seem not to understand that plenty of TPS parents have the “wherewithal for advocacy.” They are not the poor. They are the people who don’t want to work another part-time, unpaid job educating their children themselves. They are paying $1 billion in state taxes and plenty more in local taxes for that, only to learn that the TPS bureaucracy is more interesting in saving their jobs than anything else.

    If TPS would do better without charters, why didn’t it do better before charters existed? That’s a serious logical flaw in your argument.

    Besides which, most people without children in the home aren’t going to vote to tax themselves more for what’s seen as a product that doesn’t improve when the price does.

  14. Brian says:

    “If TPS would do better without charters, why didn’t it do better before charters existed? That’s a serious logical flaw in your argument.”

    Take into consideration the ever-changing landscape of the education system. Everything from student demographic makeup, to the revolving door of state and federal mandates. Teachers barely get a grasp on what they are expected to impart to their students before the rules change again.

    Why didn’t TPS do better than what? I don’t think you can logically say “TPS were bad before charters were a thing”. Because if they were bad before charters, and they are bad now, they’ve always been bad. And that simply isn’t true.

  15. Brian says:

    “They are paying $1 billion in state taxes and plenty more in local taxes for that, only to learn that the TPS bureaucracy is more interesting in saving their jobs than anything else.”

    This is a favorite overly-broad talking point, anon. What bureaucracy are you talking about? State DOE? Federal DOE? District Administrations, Boards of Education? School Administrations? All of the above?

  16. puck says:

    “If TPS would do better without charters, why didn’t it do better before charters existed? ”

    Lots of TPS were doing GREAT before charters. Then the courts said we had to send black kids into those great TPS schools too, even if they lived in Wilmington. Then charters came to Delaware. Instead of keeping up those great suburban schools, white parents abandoned them.

  17. anonymous says:

    @puck: I agree. But then, those TPS schools were almost entirely white. And if you care to really research it, you’ll find that the pre-busing schools with the best academic performance were in areas with the highest median incomes. That correlation is the only thing that testing has shown to persist over time.

    Charters are an attempt to go back to the days when poor kids were confined to their assigned schools, so they didn’t lower the test scores of an entire school.

  18. anonymous says:

    @Brian: “Why didn’t TPS do better than what? I don’t think you can logically say “TPS were bad before charters were a thing”. Because if they were bad before charters, and they are bad now, they’ve always been bad. And that simply isn’t true.”

    I didn’t say they are bad or good. If TPS performance (as measured, far too crudely, by student test scores) has declined during the charter era, that ought to be all the evidence needed to condemn the entire experiment. Has it? Because the only argument I ever hear is that TPS would grade out better if the cream of the crop hadn’t been skimmed. That ought to be easy to illustrate with data, but I’ve never seen it done.

    Yes, all of the bureaucracy. But Christina is particularly bad, because it was the most anti-busing area in New Castle County back in the ’70s.

    The obvious solution to all this is the one that will never be explored: Making all of northern New Castle County above Appo a single district. That was the situation in the immediate aftermath of the court order, but all the bureaucrats and racists whined, so they set up the current fucked-up system in response.

    Many U.S. counties have school systems with more students than such a district would have. Not only would a single district make taxation more equal, it would demonstrate that the unification of school districts is not a big money-saver. You need the same amount of administration no matter how many of those bureaucrats you call “superintendent.”

  19. kavips says:

    For our state’s small size, Delaware actually has a very good system for getting good results across the entire educational spectrum. It is only since RODEL came to town however, that we have had a well-connected voice pushing in the public forums only what was bad about education. Their one sidedness is rapidly debunked after every statement they make. But unfortunately when one challenges the status quo, one make headlines, and when another wins the verdict in the trial of logical persuasion, no one seems to notice…

    Overall when compared to Rhode Island, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, or any other state with under a million inhabitants, we do well. When you factor in how we, unlike all the other states, have a huge (~ 50% poverty level in some districts including our largest) we probably with that negative factored out, are close to the best in the nation…

    That said, we do have our problems and mostly they center on a wealthy suburban contingent of our population not wanting their children to be associated with… “those people”… Hence we have all these structures of financing imposed on us to supplement or counteract the court ordered mandate meant to ensure funding is not based strictly on race.

    That is the big amorphous overview of Delaware’s education…

    Now to the details.

    Charter Schools are experimental. That was their purpose originally: “to be cauldrons of invention” and come up with how to make public schools better.

    They were essentially a gamble or a Powerball ticket to take us to new heights… Now as family members yourselves, do you think it is correct to take money locked down for your families food, to be spent on lots of Powerball tickets? Or should that money be spent out discretionary income, and not those things needed for survivability? There is nothing wrong with playing Powerball as long as no one is harmed in its indulgence.

    Four out of five of Delaware’s children cannot get into a charter school. When you take money from those four to give to one, you hurt four to help one and ultimate across the board, settle on a negative 3 cost to society overall… (-4 + 1 = -3) … From society’s point of view, Charters are a massive failure, whether or not those in it say… “Look how great we are… ”

    People who support charters, will say this is ok… The sole, single, undebatable argument for charters has always been… Some parents want charters so we need to have them…

    What usually happens in a Democracy when people disagree on things like this, is that you have votes and constituents vote their best interests and the numbers play out and government follows the numbers and the majority of people are satisfied….

    But that hasn’t happened in an era that roughly corresponds to the time since RODEL came to town… Since then we have had a one sided approach that always benefits RODEL… to the harm of everyone else. For those who don’t know, that would involve money for charters, money for standardized testing, money for ranking schools, money for new technology, and money for corporate consultants… As you can see, all revolve around money.. which is essentially what RODEL has always been about.

    In Markell’s second term, they gained unprecedented access to our DOE, in fact, filling in a vacancy in our line of Superintendents with one of their employees. So like this overturned funding decision (advantageous to Charters) which was very detrimental to all public school districts, all policies tend to be done in back-rooms with very few people, and if G/A approval is required, pushed through the House and Senate with no debate or explanations given… Which boils down to simply a nice way to define graft and corruption…..

    Point being. If you want to experiment with Charters, which is fine, take it all out of your discretionary income, by funding them with line items in the state budget and return to letting all referendum money flow straight to public schools. … and we’d be done with this.

    The idea that instead of funding our public schools to the best of our ability, we would fund fly-by-night educational experiments with public school money, is where we got off track.

    If you want to fund private schools with public money, it should come out of the pockets of Copeland and friends, not those people paying lots of cash to make their public schools better, a glow which in turn helps elevate their own value of their homes…

  20. anonymous says:

    “mostly [the problems] center on a wealthy suburban contingent of our population not wanting their children to be associated with… “those people”…”

    Bullshit. They center mostly on NON-wealthy suburban parents. The wealthy ones can just go to private schools, and almost 20% of Delaware’s students do.

    ” if G/A approval is required, pushed through the House and Senate with no debate or explanations given… Which boils down to simply a nice way to define graft and corruption”

    Bullshit again. Was the latest attempt to do right by the city’s children undermined by “graft and corruption”? No. Did it pass? No. You have a narrative and you stick to it despite it being a web of paranoia, innuendo and outright addle-brained bullshit that’s only right about half the time. Not to mention you have zero understanding of the politics behind any of it, which all boils down to property values. Most taxpayers don’t have kids.

    “The idea that instead of funding our public schools to the best of our ability, we would fund fly-by-night educational experiments with public school money, is where we got off track.”

    Thanks, Sherlock. But you’re wrong. We went off-track when we opted for court-ordered busing to fix the red-lining real estate problem that created segregated schools in the first place.

    “If you want to fund private schools with public money, it should come out of the pockets of Copeland and friends,”

    Why? None of his kids go to public school. He’s not the one pushing charters. You don’t even understand their skin in the game — they’re after the $1 billion. They don’t give a flying fuck about the kids.

    “not those people paying lots of cash to make their public schools better, a glow which in turn helps elevate their own value of their homes…”

    Really? Prove it. Show me the Delaware school district in which educational testing scores rather than percentage of low-income students led to gains in property values. You’ve made an unsustainable assertion there.

    RODEL came to town because Delaware, in addition to having the highest percentage in the nation of students in private schools, is third in per-capita charter attendance.

    There are roughly 27,000 Delaware students in charter schools. Every one of them is there because their parents made that choice. That’s 27,000 charter supporters, by definition, unless you know of a big movement of people who have tried charters but brought their kids back to TPS.

    The traditional public school is going the way of the dodo. Charters are not the answer, but neither are TPS. Sorry, Brian, but if people were satisfied with TPS, you wouldn’t have 27,000 students in charters.

  21. puck says:

    “The traditional public school is going the way of the dodo. ”

    Hardly. Charters need TPS as a farm system for their selected students, and as a sump for their castoffs. Same is true for any non TPS schools.

  22. Brian says:

    You are right, many are not satisfied with TPS but that does not mean TPS is going the way of the dodo. TPS enrollment has increased every year since 2004. Maybe I am missing something but my last count of Charter enrollment (2015-16) has it at just under 12,000 students.

    I think the idea of K-5, 6-8, 9-12 general ed school buildings may be on the way out, but I don’t think the public school system as a whole is dying whether your tax bill wants it to or not.

    “I didn’t say they are bad or good. If TPS performance (as measured, far too crudely, by student test scores) has declined during the charter era, that ought to be all the evidence needed to condemn the entire experiment. Has it?”

    You said if TPS declined during charter years, *why didn’t they do better before* charters? Which sort of infers they weren’t good then either and did poorly as charters grew, and there’s a baseline somewhere in the fog of your argument that you’re measuring off of..but whatever.

    Again, how would you like student achievement measured? Which test? Which student groups? And what’s your test of choice’s data illustrating? How should we normalize a 2016 public school’s testing data to compare with a 2006 public school’s testing data?

  23. anonymous says:

    No, you’re missing what the drivers are here. Again, nobody cares about the students. It’s about the money, and as long as a “conservative” anti-tax party exists, public education will have an enormous target on its back. It’s easy to see why. Retail isn’t the only field in which a tremendous amount of money is spent on bricks and mortar.

    Delaware spends more than $1 billion on public schools at the state level, which comprises only about 60% of the costs, so the total tax bill is about $1.7 billion per year, and that only educates about 80% of the students. We are moving closer to universal health care, which will eat up a growing portion of governmental budgets. Everybody dies, but not everybody has kids, so guess which constituency will get the money at crunch time?

    I can’t foresee what the changes will be, but I can foresee that people don’t want to pay more than they do now for education, and that means they will elect people who will cut rather than add to the bill.

  24. Brian says:

    “nobody cares about the students.”

    And with that, I’m done going in circles with you anon.

    (ps: 87% of school students in DE are educated by the public school system in one form or another)

  25. anonymous says:

    Oops, my bad. I added the total to all the county totals. You’re right, it’s about 13,000 students.

    “Again, how would you like student achievement measured?”

    First off, they haven’t “achieved” anything. Let’s call it “learning.” What’s wrong with a single test at the end of the year, used for nothing beyond measuring what the student has learned? I don’t even see the value in that, other than assessing whether the student is ready for the next grade level.

    Second, I see no value in comparing 2016 students to 2006 students. I want the entire concept of “teacher accountability” thrown out the window. The responsibility for learning is on the student. A teacher’s proper job is to help the student learn, not to “teach.”

    These are unrealistic desires, but at least I’m aware of that. Too many TPS supporters aren’t aware that their desires, too, are unrealistic. Not wrong, just very unlikely to be obtainable.

    BTW, I’m not saying public education will disappear. But I’ll be very surprised if, in 20 years, we haven’t come up with a better system of distance learning. It’s the buildings, not the education, that will disappear. I should have been clearer about that. Again, my bad.

  26. anonymous says:

    If you look at it a different way — since you pointed out that 87% are educated on the public dime — only 75% or so are in TPS.

    I didn’t realize what a big hit the private schools took in the Great Recession. Total enrollment is about 20,000, down from about 25,000 in the early and mid-aughts.

    As for being “done with me,” have it your way. You think you’ll clear the field pulling weeds by hand. I’m telling you the farmer is stocking up on Round-Up.

  27. Another Mike says:

    “your comment leads back to the original “intent” of charters in Delaware. Bastions of experimental education policies that, if proven to increase achievement (or other variable metrics) should be incorporated back into the District at large.”

    I’m no expert on schools or education, but this question has always fascinated me. Charter of Wilmington (Delaware’s free private school) has been around for 20 years now and is by any academic measure a huge success (acknowledging its selective enrollment). Can anyone name one experimental education policy that has been incorporated into a TPS in the district? I’m not being snarky; I am sincerely curious. If not, why not?

    “The Vo-Tech problem has existed in this state since the dawn of busing — vo-techs (except Howard) were the first refuge for the white flight crew”

    The pattern seems to be moving south along with the population. Look at St. Georges, Polytech and Sussex Tech. Those places are beautiful, well-equipped and doing a good job.

  28. pandora says:

    I can’t think of any, Another Mike, but maybe I’m missing something.

    I do know that AP courses at public high schools come under fire when charters skim the “best” students due to unit counts. Less students taking AP = less AP offered.

    I’m all for charter schools being housed as programs in public schools. Seems like a win win. Oh, unless you’re a racist… then not so much. 😉

  29. puck says:

    “Can anyone name one experimental education policy that has been incorporated into a TPS in the district?”

    Inclusion of special education students. Not exactly experimental anymore, but let’s see charters do it.

  30. puck says:

    “Can anyone name one experimental education policy that has been incorporated into a TPS in the district?”

    AVID

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advancement_Via_Individual_Determination

  31. anonymous says:

    “Those places are beautiful, well-equipped and doing a good job.”

    No, they aren’t. They are selecting college-prep students for positions intended for trade-program students, and they’re doing it at a 50% higher per-pupil cost — all while “skimming the cream” just like CSW does.

    CWS is, strictly speaking, not really a “charter” school in the classic definition, but a “magnet” school. Because Delaware’s lawmakers are, in general, poorly educated (no, not the ones who work for universities, but those are a small minority), they apparently couldn’t handle the two concepts, charters and magnets, at the same time. So everything became a “charter,” even those — and this is most of them — that are actually magnets.

    To my knowledge, the only charter school that ever existed in Delaware that actually used non-traditional TEACHING methods — the supposed raison d’etre for their existence — was one in Georgetown that the state shuttered about 10 years ago for financial reasons. It was pretty clear then that neither the DOE nor the teachers’ union were interested in exploring such teaching methods.

    For that matter, neither is anyone here, so spare me the “make charters do [fill in the blank]” arguments. You have no interest whatever in improving charter schools. Virtually everybody here is in agreement that they are tools of the enemy.

    “Inclusion of special education students. Not exactly experimental anymore, but let’s see charters do it.”

    Why? Who benefits? The taxpayer, I guess, because actually educating special ed students (as opposed to parking them in regular classrooms) costs twice as much because of the one-on-one attention needed. The only positive result for non-special-ed students is that they learn earlier in life about disabilities.

    So, basically, your suggestion isn’t about education, but about punishing people who don’t share your social goals.

    I sent my kids to school to learn them subjects I couldn’t teach them. Learning that some people are special-needs isn’t among them.

    Judging by the comments here, “questioning your assumptions” isn’t one of the things we’re doing a very good job of teaching.

  32. anonymous says:

    @puck: I think she wanted an example from Delaware.

  33. kavips says:

    Just looking at the arguments coming from both sides, there seems to be no disagreement that the only reason charters exist, is as a form of defacto segregation.

    Both pro-charters and anti-charters agree on that one thing.

  34. puck says:

    AVID is in place in Brandywine and Red Clay that I know of.

  35. Brian says:

    Why? Who benefits? The taxpayer, I guess, because actually educating special ed students (as opposed to parking them in regular classrooms) costs twice as much because of the one-on-one attention needed.

    Financially speaking, that’s not entirely accurate.

    “The only positive result for non-special-ed students is that they learn earlier in life about disabilities.”

    What a shitty (and narrow minded) way to look at that, but it goes along with just about everything else you’ve been saying.

    Experimental education programs in Delaware:
    Cambridge: http://www.cie.org.uk/. In place in a few districts, including Christina.

    AVID is also in place in Christina School District.

    Several districts are ramping up dual college enrollment programs in their secondary schools.

    Gifted and Talented programs are also seeing a comeback, and while I don’t consider them “experimental” necessarily, I do think they’ve been neglected for quite some time.

  36. Brian says:

    BTW, I’m not saying public education will disappear. But I’ll be very surprised if, in 20 years, we haven’t come up with a better system of distance learning. It’s the buildings, not the education, that will disappear. I should have been clearer about that. Again, my bad.

    anonymous, there’s something I can agree with 95% of. The other 5% being that I don’t think all buildings will disappear. I still think there will (always) be a place for in-classroom/lab learning. Educational delivery models are going to change.

  37. puck says:

    As long as there is a legal mandate to educate the kids charters don’t want, there will be bricks-and-mortar TPS. I don’t think the public would accept online as the only non-charter public alternative.

  38. anonymous says:

    Shitty, narrow-minded and accurate.

    That’s what the research says. Deal with it.

  39. anonymous says:

    “As long as there is a legal mandate to educate the kids charters don’t want, there will be bricks-and-mortar TPS.”

    I agree. But legal mandates change. Or hadn’t you noticed?

  40. Rufus Y. Kneedog says:

    Going back to the original post – thank you once again Brian for laying this out in an understandable format.

  41. anonymous says:

    Going back to the original post, it’s in the courts at the moment, so at this point the next step will be taken without public input.

    If the courts are willing to get involved, TPS supporters in Christina should sue over Newark Charter School. Delaware has no clearer example of a Charter that exists mainly to screen applicants on nothing but geographical boundaries. In a state in which red-lining was practiced so widely, geography still goes a long way to restriction based on race. They would have standing, but the trick is finding someone to hire the attorneys.

    The busing case took several years of legal maneuvering. Du Pont was willing to foot the bill because it helped the company’s long-term interests. I don’t know where you’d find the sympathetic corporate ear for this today.