Report slams Louisiana charter school oversight
State education officials said their findings of special education violations at Lagniappe Academies showed their monitoring process worked. A Tuesday report disagrees, saying it shows Louisiana charters don't have enough oversight.
(Danielle Dreilinger, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)
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Danielle Dreilinger, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune
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on May 12, 2015 at 2:10 PM, updated May 12, 2015 at 5:30 PM
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Louisiana understaffs its
charter schoolsoversight offices and, instead of proactively investigating these schools, relies on charters' own reports and whistleblowers to uncover problems, according to a
report released Tuesday (May 12) by the
Center for Popular Democracy and the Coalition for Community Schools. That allows theft, cheating and mismanagement to happen, such as the
$26,000 stolen from Lake Area New Tech High and the years of
special education violations alleged at Lagniappe Academies.
The report also casts a skeptical eye on the veracity of the data that Louisiana uses to calculate the
performance scores that keep charters open and determine their renewal terms. And it faults the state for closing struggling charters instead of intervening to improve them.
The Center for Popular Democracy's partners include the American Federation of Teachers, which has an uneasy relationship with charters, and the Annenberg Institute for School Reform, which studies charter school oversight. Kyle Serrette, the center's director of educational justice campaigns, said its parent members had children in charter and conventional public schools.
That said, one of the report's recommendations is to "impose a moratorium on new charter schools until the state oversight system is adequately reformed."
The Louisiana-based Coalition for Community Schools opposes charter schools outright and
filed a civil rights complaint against the state Education Department in 2014. That complaint also included a demand to freeze chartering in New Orleans.
The two groups' report said Louisiana charters could suffer from "tens of millions of fraud in the 2013-14 school year alone," based on the methodology of the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners. In that time, employees of three New Orleans charter schools stole about $110,000, and two charter operators were accused of meddling with retirement payments.
#grayscale'); -webkit-filter: grayscale(100%); background: url(
http://www.nola.com/static/common/img/sprites/meta-sprite-ext.png) -390px 0px no-repeat;">Oversight agencies play almost no role in helping charter schools improve academic outcomes."
"The state has invested heavily in increasing the number of charter schools while failing to create a solid regulatory framework that truly protects students, families and taxpayers," the authors write. Furthermore, "oversight agencies play almost no role in helping charter schools improve academic outcomes. ... The state has no system in place to provide a path to high-quality academics for all struggling charter schools."
Charter schools are publicly funded but run by independent non-profit boards. They control their own curriculum and hiring but must meet academic and operational standards to stay open. The state Education Department oversees most of Louisiana's 130-plus charters; local school systems oversee the rest.
Read the report
However, as of December, the Education Department's charter audit team consisted of only three people, according to a critical December report from the Louisiana legislative auditor's office. Education Superintendent John White
defended his team at the time, saying they reviewed charter schools' audits, among other activities.
Tuesday's paper says that isn't enough. Not only do charters hire their own accountants to conduct annual audits, but the audits are not designed to prevent or detect fraud. Indeed, reports typically contain a disclaimer saying they are not expressing an opinion on fraud controls. The legislative auditor's office might dig deeper but rarely does so, the report states.
"The only audits Louisiana charter schools routinely undergo are the ones they pay for themselves," the authors write.
The report faults the Education Department for not spending enough time on-site at charters. Charters receive regular visits and reviews from state inspectors, and Louisiana Recovery School District officials said their own findings of wrongdoing at Lagniappe Academies in New Orleans showed that their oversight procedures worked.
The authors of Tuesday's report disagreed. The state's 2013-14 review of Lagniappe Academies gave full points for special education, the two organizations said, and it was only later that state inspectors uncovered extensive reports of violations during that time period.
"The situation at Lagniappe shows exactly the problems with the state's oversight structure for charter schools," the report says. "The state relies on a
largely self-reporting oversight structure that is easily manipulated by the schools themselves."
The authors doubt the accuracy of the test scores that are used to measure charters' academic performance, writing that the data "is vulnerable to manipulation."
Finally, the authors disagree with the state's readiness to close charters, including Lagniappe.
"Clearly there are times when problems are significant enough that a school must be closed. Yet, the current intervention (process) is designed to make school closure a normal and common part of the state's accountability system," the authors write. "The system needs to be updated to produce more stability for Louisiana children." In six years, more than 1,700 New Orleans students have seen their charter schools close, according to the report.
Louisiana's laws are "designed to set a high standard but not to help," Serrette said.
The state does at times intervene instead of closing schools, although this is not mentioned in the report. The Recovery School District has chosen successful charter operators to take over failing schools, for example, and
White directed Lycée Français to find a new chief executive and assigned it a consultant team. Lycée has gone on to make a B grade, and its charter contract has been extended.
The report's recommendations include:
- Require fraud audits every three years, to be conducted by the state legislative auditor's office
- Train charter staff and boards on preventing fraud
- Hire more staff for the legislative auditor's office and charter school oversight teams
- Require "mandatory, hands-on, long-term, strategic support" for charters in trouble
- Go beyond test scores when calculating school letter grades
- Create local committees, including neighbors and parents, to design schools that serve the needs of a community
- Coordinate social services at and around schools
- Release raw testing data to the public.
Some of these issues are not unique to charters. Louisiana's conventional public schools also face pressure to keep test scores high: If they don't, they may be taken over by the state. There have been numerous examples of
corruption and fraud in school boards and systems. Serrette said it was likely Louisiana's regular school systems needed stronger oversight as well.
http://www.nola.com/education/index.ssf/2015/05/report_slams_louisiana_charter.html
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