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ALBANY, N.Y. (July 23, 2010) -- City School District of Albany Board of
Education President Daniel Egan submitted the following comments July 23
in response to the SUNY Charter Schools Institute's call for comments on
the Draft Request for Proposals to Establish New York State Charter
Schools. The SUNY timeline calls for a final RFP to be issued Aug. 2 for
an application period ending Aug. 16. The SUNY Board of Trustees is
scheduled to vote Sept. 15 to approve 32 new charter schools statewide.
Click here to
read the full SUNY Draft RFP.
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I am
writing in regard to the SUNY Charter Schools Institute’s call, on
behalf of the Board of Trustees, for comments on the draft Request for
Proposals to Establish New York State Charter Schools (the RFP). The
City School District of Albany respectfully asks, in the best interest
of the thousands of schoolchildren and taxpayers statewide who will be
affected by this decision, that the RFP review process be extended to
allow more thorough consideration of the criteria and timelines that
will be set in place once this critical decision becomes final.
The
impact of moving forward without sufficient time to address what we
believe to be serious flaws in the RFP, particularly the extremely short
application and review period for SUNY’s next 32 charters and the lack
of meaningful involvement of local public-school districts, will be
severe. The RFP as drafted does not sufficiently require prospective
charter operators to identify a need and a significant educational
benefit for their proposed schools, nor does it adequately take into
account the potential impact on local school districts and the programs
available to all students in those communities. The RFP proposes to
consider new applications in a vacuum that ignores the current local
educational environment and the long-term impact on that environment for
all students, threatening to disadvantage those students and families
who are not able to enroll, or choose not to enroll, in charter
schools.
Students
and taxpayers in the City School District of Albany already struggle
with the consequences of the faulty and poorly planned processes
originally established to approve charter schools in New York State.
In the
2010-11 school year, 11 taxpayer-supported charter schools – nine of
them approved by SUNY – will serve about 2,000 Albany students alongside
15 public schools serving about 8,400 students. The duplicative,
redundant taxpayer-supported system that has been forced on our
community has diverted more than $126 million from our budget over the
past decade. It will divert at least another $26.5 million in 2010-11 –
more than $31.5 million if the governor’s recent veto of the
charter-school tuition freeze is not overturned. This is jeopardizing
our efforts to raise achievement for all students, especially at Albany
High School, where we are in the early stages of a vital restructuring
plan to address low graduation rates and high failure rates among
African-American and Hispanic students.
We
believe the RFP, as currently drafted, would risk extending these fiscal
and academic hardships to school districts across the state. We implore
SUNY to allow more time to address the inadequacies of the RFP so that
the next generation of charter schools in New York State will be born of
a rigorous, well-planned process that embraces the needs of all
students, whether their schools are charter, public, private or
parochial.
Inadequate time for thoughtful planning and review
SUNY
proposes to identify and approve the first 32 charters to be issued
under New York State’s new charter-school law in just 45 days. This
following a mere 12 days for the public to review, digest and provide
feedback on the 100-page RFP that will lead SUNY into its next
generation of charter-school growth. We find this timeline wholly
inadequate for any thoughtful review, either of the RFP process or the
application process. Moreover, the state’s new charter law provides
that any charter not issued in a given period can be rolled over to the
next charter-issuance period. From Education Law §9-a(a)(ii):
(ii)
Notwithstanding the provisions of clauses one, two, three and
four of
subparagraph (i) of this paragraph, if fewer charters are issued
than were requested in the request for proposals, the difference may be
added to the number of charters requested in the request for proposals
in the succeeding year.
Although
we believe there are fundamental weaknesses in the RFP that must be
addressed before it can be made public, the months-long application and
review process proposed for the 98 charters to be awarded in 2011-13
provides a more reasonable timeframe for thoughtful planning and review
of the myriad factors that must be considered in these critical
decisions. A faulty decision to approve or deny even a single
application could have a significant negative impact on the children of
the community the school is intended to serve. No charter should be
issued without a full, open and complete review.
The
timeline proposed for approval of the state’s next 32 charters is an
unacceptable way to manage an RFP process. There is no justification to
act in haste when every application should be provided a very thorough
review. Deadlines are far less important than the futures of thousands
of children. We ask that you revise the timeline for the September round
of charter approvals to provide a comfortable period of time (at least
double what is proposed) for a complete and thoughtful review.
Transparency and the need for input from the local district
Public
school districts, and particularly public school districts where charter
schools are being considered and approved, historically have been shut
out of the review process in New York State. The RFP does nothing to
address this glaring failure of the SUNY process to adequately and
openly consider the impact these decisions have on local school
districts.
A
completely transparent process should allow at least one representative
from the local school district to serve in an official capacity on the
external-review team that studies each application. Historically, SUNY
has carried out its charter reviews and approvals behind a curtain that
shielded local districts from a meaningful opportunity to assess the
impact or even the presumed need outlined in an application. Who better
than the local district to provide substantive input on questions about
specific inadequacies that a charter applicant is proposing to fill?
Local
school districts, because they are led by school boards elected by their
entire communities, are the logical representatives of the major
stakeholders for these significant decisions. We applaud SUNY for the
commitment to transparency stated in the RFP. To that end, we request
the following be included in the final version of the RFP:
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All
public comments on this RFP, and the institute’s responses, should
be made publicly available prior to the RFP’s release
-
A
public opening of all applications received during each application
period.
-
A
complete tabulation made publicly available of all RFP responses,
with the name of the district and the number of students to be
served.
-
As
stated above, a seat on the review team for a representative from
local districts for which charter schools are proposed.
-
A
complete list made publicly available of all internal and external
reviewers.
-
All
review comments should be publicly available prior to the award of
any charter.
-
All
scores for each application should be made publicly available no
later than the time of a charter award.
-
All
correspondence between applicants and the Charter Schools Institute
should be provided to the local district no later than the time of a
charter award.
-
All
internal audits of existing charters should be made publicly
available in a timely manner.
Fiscal impact on local districts
This
important aspect is insufficiently addressed throughout the RFP.
The
institute should require that all financial plans be reviewed and
approved by an independent certified public accountant or the chief
business official of the local district. Failure to do so calls into
serious question the integrity of any assessment of potential fiscal
impact offered by a charter-school applicant.
We also
ask again that all internal audits of existing charter schools are made
publicly available to provide the taxpayers who support these schools a
full and clear accounting of how their tax dollars are being spent in
charter schools. We request that charter schools agree to hold
themselves to the same standards to which public districts are held in
this critical area, an issue addressed in the state’s new charter
statute. From Education Law §2854(1)(c):
(c)
A charter school shall be subject to the financial audits, the
audit procedures, and the audit requirements set forth in the charter
and shall be subject to audits of the comptroller of the state of New
York at his or her discretion. Such procedures and standards shall be
consistent with generally accepted accounting and audit standards. Inde-
pendent fiscal audits shall be required at least once annually.
An
inadequate scoring rubric
The
entire scoring rubric outlined on pages 10-12 of the RFP is wholly
inadequate, setting a low bar of rigor that fails to hold charter
applicants to the higher standard for which they are supposed to strive
– philosophically and legally. In addition, the absence of a detailed
scoring rubric for all of the requirements in Education Law 2851 and
compliance with Education Law 2852(2) is troubling. Specifically, the
RFP proposes nothing more than a global “pass/fail” score for the 30 or
so factors that are required to be considered in these applications, in
addition to the others that are specified in the scoring rubric.
In the
scoring rubric, it is further troubling that applicants are awarded
“bonus points” for meeting what ought to be minimum standards. For
example, in regard to middle-school applications, the RFP indicates that
simply enrolling middle-school students is a plan to be credited with
one bonus point. Further down the rubric, providing a “realistic
long-term financial plan” qualifies an applicant for the maximum of two
bonus points. This second example assumes that a charter application
lacking a “realistic long-term financial plan” nevertheless may be
granted a charter.
Surely
these should be examples of minimum standards that any applicant must
meet, not examples of a rigorous proposal designed to raise achievement
for all students that would be served. Because we have so many concerns
about the inadequacies of the scoring rubric, we request a meeting
before the RFP is final and made public to discuss the serious problems
with the scoring methodology.
Insufficient curricular standards
We
continue to disagree with SUNY’s position that its charter schools need
not strive to meet the same New York State Learning Standards as public
schools. Failing to require rich curriculum in the areas of art,
technology, career development and occupational studies, health,
physical education and consumer sciences fails to provide students with
the complete education they deserve. It also perpetuates the unlevel
standards by which the performance of public and charter schools are
measured. This allows charter schools to create a perceived level of
achievement that in fact limits the academic, social and emotional
growth of its students. Charter schools use this perception to their
advantage to build financial and political support for a model that, in
the long run, is not in the best interests of all students.
We point
to Albany’s KIPP Tech Valley Charter School as an example.
In 2009,
KIPP graduated the first cohort of students to go through all four years
of its program. Although the school could boast that 100 percent of its
eighth-grade students scored Level 3 or Level 4 on the 2009 state math
and ELA tests, KIPP’s Class of 2009 actually lost ground in overall
achievement.
Measured
in real numbers, fewer students were achieving at grade level in both
subject areas after four years at KIPP. In 2006, there were 40 students
achieving Levels 3-4 in both math and ELA; in 2009 there were only 37 in
both subjects.
Illustrating the school’s academic travails in even more glaring terms,
KIPP’s Class of 2009 had a four-year graduation rate of 31 percent. Of
the 88 students who attended as fifth-graders in the school’s first
year, 2005-06, only 27 completed the program four years later, according
to student information KIPP provided to the district. From the original
cohort of KIPP fifth-graders, 55 students left the school before
completing eighth grade and six remained enrolled in 2009-10 after being
held back.
KIPP’s
academic record does not provide evidence of a school having a positive
impact on the education of Albany students or advancing academic
practice through quality innovation. On the contrary, it is evidence of
a school floundering for a foothold in an oversaturated 5-8 environment
that will be further destabilized by the addition of the two Brighter
Choice middle schools this fall.
In
2008-09, 14 KIPP students returned to Albany’s public schools, a trend
that increased in 2009-10. From September through February, KIPP
reported 20 fewer Albany students (8 percent) as its Albany enrollment
continued on a downward trend that will be difficult to turn around with
significant new competition on the way next fall. Clearly, SUNY’s focus
on a limited curriculum is serving only a small percentage of the
students who choose KIPP, and we ask that SUNY correct this glaring
deficiency in its standards for curriculum by demanding that all charter
applicants meet the New York State Learning Standards as a minimum
requirement for approval.
Enrollment thresholds
It is
well known that the City School District of Albany has the largest
percentage of students enrolled in charter schools of any district in
New York State – approximately 19 percent in the 2009-10 school year. We
continue to assert that SUNY consistently has failed to follow the
fourth criterion of Education Law §2852, which specifically provides
that an application may not be granted unless the charter entity finds
that:
“[I]n a
school district where the total enrollment of resident students
attending charter schools in the base year is greater than five percent
of the
total public school enrollment of the school district in the base
year (i)
granting the application would have a significant educa-
tional benefit to the students expected to attend the proposed
charter
school or (ii) the school district in which the charter school
will be
located consents to such application.” (emphasis added).
We are
disappointed once again to note that the RFP does not include specific
language to address the oversaturation of charter schools in
Albany. However, we applaud the inclusion of the language in section 39b
of the RFP and submit that, given the excess capacity already existing
in charter and public schools in Albany, it would be impossible for any
new charter to meet these requirements.
Improving educational opportunities for all students in New York State
is critical for our future. We recognize the great benefit of diverse
approaches to education that provide families with options to choose the
best environment to fit the needs of their children. We also recognize
our own responsibility to do more to enhance the opportunities and
achievement for all students in our school district. But we know that
these goals cannot be accomplished – in Albany or any community across
New York State – by forcing taxpayer-supported schools to operate under
separate sets of rules that put traditional public schools at a
competitive disadvantage.
As the
institute and trustees prepare to move forward with the next generation
of charter-school development in New York State, we ask that you fully
address our concerns regarding need, impact, timing, process,
transparency, accountability and academic standards before issuing a
final RFP. The future of our children is too important to be compromised
by a process that settles for anything less.
The mission of the City School District of
Albany is to educate and nurture all students to be
responsible citizens, critical thinkers and lifelong learners to
successfully compete in the global community by providing an
academically rigorous and safe environment in partnership with parents,
students and the community. The district serves approximately 8,400 students in 16
elementary, middle and high schools. In addition to neighborhood
schools, the district includes several magnet schools and programs, as
well as other innovative academic opportunities for students.
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