Public schools and people who want to change them.

[Deleted]

This article is from my local paper today. Something doesn't sit right with me that parents that didn't even attempt to send their children to the public schools are now trying to change them. The private schools their children attend are among the most expensive and exclusive in the city. I do think that something needs to be fixed in education, but I'm not a fan of charters. I'm especially not a fan of a charter school for affluent parents.


Nashville Charter School Advocates Push Their Visions.

A trio of wealthy, politically connected businessmen with past ties to the for-profit education industry and a history of supporting local private schools has launched a political action committee aimed at stocking the Nashville school board with members favorable to bringing more charter schools.

Townes Duncan, who is CEO of the local investment firm Solidus Co., joined with longtime charter school advocates Bill DeLoache and John Eason to create the Great Public Schools PAC on April 26, according to documents filed with the election commission.

DeLoache and Eason started a for-profit education business in 1993 that had mixed results and eventually was absorbed by another company a decade ago.

All three are ardent supporters of charter schools, which are publicly financed but privately run and are given the freedom to install their own curriculum.

With some community leaders starting to push back on charter school expansion and five of nine school board positions up for election Aug. 2, the Great Public Schools PAC will provide financial help to candidates who back their vision for Metro Nashville Public Schools.

Formation of the political action committee comes as public education stakeholders are turning their attention to tonight’s school board meeting, where decisions will be made on nine new charter school applications.

Among those is a proposal from Arizona-based Great Hearts Academy, which DeLoache, Eason and Duncan support, to launch a charter school in affluent West Nashville. The idea has been criticized by some Nashville leaders and parents who think the school would sap public schools of top students and resources.

But the mission of the Great Public Schools PAC and the men behind it is much broader and more ambitious than one charter school application. Already their funding and advocacy efforts apart from the PAC have played a critical role in the rapid expansion of charter schools in Nashville. Five years ago, Nashville charters received $4 million in public funding, but Metro has budgeted $25 million to pay for 3,000 students for the upcoming school year.

Their vision is to see the Nashville public system make a dramatic shift over time to a so-called portfolio strategy, which gives every public school the ability to become its own charter school, while stripping the district’s administrative office of many of its current responsibilities.

Political connections

In separate interviews, all three said they educated their own children at private schools in Nashville after their research concluded the public school system was not a good fit. And the ties go deeper.

Duncan has been a board member at Ensworth Academy, where he played a leading role in its addition of a high school.

DeLoache was a board member at Harding Academy and served as chairman when it sought to build a youth athletics facility in a suburban Belle Meade neighborhood earlier this decade. DeLoache is also a trustee of the Joe C. Davis Foundation, named after his millionaire uncle, which has donated nearly $3 million to private Montgomery Bell Academy and Harpeth Hall in recent years. DeLoache said the foundation has donated to the private schools because his uncle was an MBA graduate who believed his life was changed for the better because he went to the school.

The three are also politically connected. Congressman Jim Cooper, D-Nashville, said he’s known each of them for 30 years and called them “three of the most energetic leaders” of the local charter school movement, and said DeLoache was a “hero” for what he’s done for education reform.

U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander was a fellow board member with DeLoache and Eason in their for-profit charter company. Metro Councilman Carter Todd counts the trio among his friends. And DeLoache is the cousin of Mayor Karl Dean’s wife.

Dean said DeLoache was key in the creation of the Charter School Incubator, a nonprofit group that assists charter startups in Nashville and Memphis. DeLoache is chairman of the board of directors for the incubator, which, along with the affiliated Charter School Growth Fund of Tennessee, has raised $29 million since it was formed in 2009. The Davis Foundation alone provided $2 million of that total.

DeLoache said that either through the incubator or the family foundation he has provided financial support for eight current or potential Nashville charter schools. He said he’s given encouragement and advice to three others, including Great Hearts Academy.

“I would like to see … a portfolio approach,” said DeLoache, explaining his vision for Nashville’s public schools. “In that approach, the district is just trying to expand great operators and change consistently poor operators without looking at it through the lens of government.”

Mistakes made

DeLoache’s and Eason’s passion for charter schools materialized in the 1990s when they began lobbying the Tennessee General Assembly to pass a bill to allow charter schools in Tennessee. The effort failed, leading DeLoache and Eason to approach the Nashville school board.

After learning of an obscure law that allowed private groups to take over a failing public school with the blessing of local officials, DeLoache and Eason presented their proposal.

“Our offer was, ‘Give us your worst school, your least performing school, and we’ll take it over,’ ” Eason said.

But again, DeLoache and Eason were turned down as their proposal failed by way of a 5-4 school board vote in 1993. On the heels of those rejections, they decided to create Alternative Public Schools, a for-profit company that would seek contracts to operate struggling schools.

DeLoache, who attended Vanderbilt University and has a background in finance, told The Nation magazine in a 1997 article about the burgeoning charter school movement that they were just “citizens with a hobby” when they bid on their first contract to operate Turner Elementary School in economically downtrodden Wilkinsburg, Pa.

Eason, another Vanderbilt graduate with a finance background, said they decided to pursue a for-profit model because, unlike today, private benefactors weren’t propping up nonprofit groups to run charter schools at that time. Though they were hoping to make a profit on the business, the goal, Eason said, was a much more ambitious one: to change the nation’s public school system.

“We believed the public school system was broken, and it had a monopoly,” Eason said.

Alternative Public Schools, which would be renamed Beacon Education Management, ran into problems with its first school. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that it was illegal for the local school board to contract with a private company to run Turner Elementary, and students there had worse test scores at the end of the first year. Though their company would go on to open 25 for-profit charter schools and merge with Florida-based Chancellor Academies, Eason said, he and DeLoache saw none or very little profit on their original investment.

DeLoache concedes they made mistakes when they launched Alternative Public Schools, especially the decision to make it a for-profit company.

“The fundamental errors we made can be demonstrated by comparing our outcome to (national charter organization) KIPP Academy,” DeLoache said. “They were a nonprofit. They were more geographically focused.

“It was a huge personal disappointment not to be one of the successful (early charter operators). On the other hand, our core concept that having outside organizations operate public schools, where they had autonomy and accountability and great talent, that turned out to be correct.”

Critic speaks out

On the heels of those disappointments, DeLoache and Eason refocused their efforts on two areas in Tennessee: liberalizing the state’s laws so more students would have access to charter schools and recruiting established charter organizations, including KIPP, to Nashville.

Marsha Edwards, who is the CEO of the Martha O’Bryan Center, an East Nashville faith-based nonprofit that assists children and families living in poverty, said Eason “practically lived at Legislative Plaza” as he worked to change the law. In 2009, charter school advocates saw a significant breakthrough when the state law was changed to allow children on free or reduced lunch plans to enroll in charter schools. Previously only students who were failing or attending failing schools were eligible for charter schools. The law also lifted the cap on the number of charter schools in the state.

In 2011, charter advocates enjoyed another legislative success when the General Assembly, supported by Gov. Bill Haslam, passed a law opening enrollment in charter schools to all students regardless of their economic standing.

That victory, though, is not without its critics.

State Rep. Mike Stewart, D-Nashville, said that law was the first instance of charter advocates going too far. Stewart said the mission of charter schools had been to provide different education options for disadvantaged children. Pointing to the hotly debated proposal from Great Hearts, which held community meetings in West Nashville in hopes of eventually bringing a charter school to the area, Stewart worried that the expansion of charter schools was damaging the public school system by taking funding away from traditional schools. He said charters should focus on underserved children zoned for failing schools.

“Gov. Haslam and the charter advocates have abandoned the original mission of charter schools, which was to educate disadvantaged children,” Stewart said.

Between the changing of the state’s charter laws and the academic successes of Nashville’s early charter operators, such as Smithson Craighead Academy and KIPP Academy, the city has seen sharp growth of charter schools in recent years. Just five years ago, Metro had 502 students in charter schools, resulting in $4 million in public funding. The current budget proposal from Dean includes $25 million for charter schools for an anticipated enrollment of 2,999 students in the upcoming school year.

More choice wanted

Though DeLoache said he’s pleased with the progress the charter school movement has made in recent years, the group is pushing for more.

At the top of the list, they say, would be switching to the portfolio strategy adopted in Chicago, Cleveland and Philadelphia. The key to such a strategy is giving schools autonomy over their budget and curriculum, while also holding them accountable for academic improvements. A central problem with the current structure of the public schools system is that the government has a monopoly on where teachers can work and where children can receive an education, Eason said.

“More choice is really what it’s all about,” he said, adding that they support Tennessee’s law that allows only nonprofits, not for-profit companies, to operate charter schools.

According to Eason, a second goal is to pass a law so that other entities such as state education officials could approve charter schools, rather than just local school boards.

This year’s school board races have provided the advocates with the opportunity to help finance the campaigns of candidates who support their vision.

Duncan, who is the treasurer of the new PAC, cited Elissa Kim as one of the candidates who had earned their support. Kim is the national executive vice president of recruitment for Teach for America, a teacher-training program with longstanding ties to the charter movement.

“Having Elissa Kim on the school board would be like having Michael Jordan on your AAU team,” said Duncan, who also singled out District 3 candidate Jarod DeLozier as someone the PAC would support.

They declined to give details on fund-raising progress and which other candidates they would support. Financial disclosures in the school board races must be filed with the election commission by July 10.

Kim is one of the candidates challenging school board chairwoman Gracie Porter, a former principal, teacher and librarian who has represented the East Nashville area district since 2006. Porter said she wasn’t surprised by the pro-charter PAC backing her opponent, but she was troubled charter schools were becoming a singular issue of the campaign.

“I’m not surprised. I’m not against charter schools, but I am against charter schools that are not functional,” Porter said, adding that she backed a system where public schools educate all, which she feels charter schools do not achieve. “We don’t turn away one single child.”

Contact Nate Rau at 615-259-8094 or [e-mail]. Follow him on Twitter @tnnaterau.

[teflep]

Why? They pay taxes to support these, just like everyone else. I see them much as I do stockholders. They seem to want change as improved schools=better products (students).

[Deleted]

But they are attempting to take out the parents who can advocate for the most change by setting up a charter in the most affluent section of town.

Also I feel like they have no skin in the game (so to speak) to insure that what they are proposing is truly good.

[Deleted]

May 29, 2012 6:25:55 GMT -5 teflep said:

Why? They pay taxes to support these, just like everyone else. I see them much as I do stockholders. They seem to want change as improved schools=better products (students).

I hope so. Seems to me that someone who pays taxes and doesn't have kids in the system probably cares more that the product is cheap than that the product is good.

But then, I think stockholders have the same problem. Stockholders don't care whether the products they sell are good or whether employees are paid fairly. They only care if they make a profit.

[teflep]

They do have skin in the game...taxes. As far as subjecting a child to poor performing schools just to save face? Um, no thanks. My kid only gets one shot at a quality education. But, that doesn't stop me from wanting that for all.

[Deleted]

May 29, 2012 7:20:02 GMT -5 @mrdobalina said:

People who don't have a kid in the schools care about the property tax/house values angle, which isn't as cut and dried as stockholders P/L balance sheet. Schools have to be thought of as "good" which means they do a good job educating, to keep house values high/stable.

You would think this would be the case but I live in an affluent county with what are considered the best schools in the country and everytime the new school budget is proposed they get their panties in a wad that it is higher than last year, even though our district is adding 800-1000 kids every year since we moved here.

[ttt]

These are the kind of people who want to make everything in our society for-profit.

[teflep]

May 29, 2012 7:37:56 GMT -5 ttt said:

These are the kind of people who want to make everything in our society for-profit.

charter schools =\= for profit

[ttt]

May 29, 2012 7:41:49 GMT -5 teflep said:

May 29, 2012 7:37:56 GMT -5 ttt said:

These are the kind of people who want to make everything in our society for-profit.

charter schools =\= for profit

They've already run a for-profit school company. Don't you think that's their ultimate goal here, to make all the schools for-profit? Certainly sounds like it to me.

[Deleted]

May 29, 2012 7:41:49 GMT -5 teflep said:

May 29, 2012 7:37:56 GMT -5 ttt said:

These are the kind of people who want to make everything in our society for-profit.

charter schools =\= for profit

then what do you call allowing for-profit companies to run charters?

[Deleted]

I just don't think charter or any reform is going to work until you fix the underlying problem of poverty

[teflep]

That's an assumption and not one I'd jump to with the federal aid they are receiving. They have ties to for-profits, but i am not seeing that in this article....just that they are pushing for a board more favorable to them. DeLoache, it states in op, is tie with a nonprofit who assists startup charters. I understand the jump, but I don't think it is a very sound one. At least not with the article at hand. Kipp, for one, is a nonprofit. It also states that their original ventures of a for profit failed. I'll need more to see if this is the PAC's plan.

[teflep]

May 29, 2012 7:46:50 GMT -5 @septimus said:

I just don't think charter or any reform is going to work until you fix the underlying problem of poverty

agree, but I believe education is one of those problems.

[Deleted]

May 29, 2012 7:58:00 GMT -5 teflep said:

That's an assumption and not one I'd jump to with the federal aid they are receiving. They have ties to for-profits, but i am not seeing that in this article....just that they are pushing for a board more favorable to them. DeLoache, it states in op, is tie with a nonprofit who assists startup charters. I understand the jump, but I don't think it is a very sound one. At least not with the article at hand. Kipp, for one, is a nonprofit. It also states that their original ventures of a for profit failed. I'll need more to see if this is the PAC's plan.

The article mentions Great Hearts Academy wanting to start a charter and they are a for-profit

[Deleted]

May 29, 2012 7:58:41 GMT -5 teflep said:

May 29, 2012 7:46:50 GMT -5 @septimus said:

I just don't think charter or any reform is going to work until you fix the underlying problem of poverty

agree, but I believe education is one of those problems.

I feel like poverty/education are chicken/egg

[teflep]

May 29, 2012 7:59:57 GMT -5 @septimus said:

May 29, 2012 7:58:00 GMT -5 teflep said:

That's an assumption and not one I'd jump to with the federal aid they are receiving. They have ties to for-profits, but i am not seeing that in this article....just that they are pushing for a board more favorable to them. DeLoache, it states in op, is tie with a nonprofit who assists startup charters. I understand the jump, but I don't think it is a very sound one. At least not with the article at hand. Kipp, for one, is a nonprofit. It also states that their original ventures of a for profit failed. I'll need more to see if this is the PAC's plan.

The article mentions Great Hearts Academy wanting to start a charter and they are a for-profit

No they are not, at least per their website at greatheartsaz.org.

[copzgirl1171]

May 29, 2012 7:58:41 GMT -5 teflep said:

May 29, 2012 7:46:50 GMT -5 @septimus said:

I just don't think charter or any reform is going to work until you fix the underlying problem of poverty

agree, but I believe education is one of those problems.

Absolutely it is. It makes me heartsick that you can lead a direct line from poverty to education and back again. In my heart I can't see the correlation because education is the backbone and key to helping break the cycle of poverty...but then my head I know that poverty is what holds people back from reaching further than what they may know.

It is such an ugly heartbreaking cycle.

[Seesaw]

I think we should abolish property tax and school districts and let parents pay tuition for public school or do home school.

I see poverty and education as two distinct issues. Education can be reformed but poverty can not and will always always exist. How could one enforce a policy prohibiting being poor?

[Deleted]

May 30, 2012 0:59:59 GMT -5 @Seesaw said:

I think we should abolish property tax and school districts and let parents pay tuition for public school or do home school.

I see poverty and education as two distinct issues. Education can be reformed but poverty can not and will always always exist. How could one enforce a policy prohibiting being poor?

Well Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland have seemed to figure out how not to have a large segment of poor people suffering generational poverty

[NitaX]

May 29, 2012 7:46:05 GMT -5 ttt said:

May 29, 2012 7:41:49 GMT -5 teflep said:

charter schools =\= for profit

They've already run a for-profit school company. Don't you think that's their ultimate goal here, to make all the schools for-profit? Certainly sounds like it to me.

It's not that big of a leap. Virtual Schools like K-12 Inc. are for profit entities traded on Wall Street. investors.k12.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=214389&p=irol-IRHome Right now, TN doesn't have Virtual Charter Schools, BUT, that push is coming. Legislators were a little miffed to learn that the sponsoring county for TN Virtual School program only got a very small administrative fee while the remaining funds went straight to K-12.

I mention that because public education is big business. Between the state and local money you receive, you add on the millions of dollars given to school districts by the federal government. Right now, the USDOE is rolling out a new district level Race to the Top grant. School districts could receive between $15 million and $25 million in grant awards. What private company wouldn't want to be able to get in line to get that much money?