NAACP to vote on controversial charter moratorium Presented by Comcast

With help from Kimberly Hefling, Mel Leonor, Mike Vasquez and Michael Stratford

NAACP TO VOTE ON CONTROVERSIAL CHARTER MORATORIUM: The NAACP is set to vote this weekend on a controversial resolution calling for a halt to charter school expansion. It’s not exactly a new stance for the NAACP, which has passed numerous resolutions critical of charters since as far back as the late 1990s. But charter schools have seen rapid growth in recent years and are under increased scrutiny, so this vote is attracting a lot more attention — and resistance — than those in the past. “Now people are really asking harder questions. It’s no longer a boutique kind of thing,” Julian Vasquez Heilig, a professor of educational leadership and policy studies at California State University-Sacramento, told Morning Education.


— The fight over charter schools is a sort of “civil war in the black community,” said Heilig, who researches charters and is a member of the NAACP, as well as a charter school critic. The NAACP vote is significant, in part, because charters are popular among many black parents — more than a quarter of students attending charter schools are black, whereas black students make up just 15 percent of the nation’s overall enrollment. Pro-charter groups have long held up charters as a better option for low-income and minority students who have been let down by the public school system, so if the NAACP takes an even stronger stance against the schools, it could be a blow to the charter movement.

— The battle over the NAACP vote reflects a broader rift in the Democratic Party. To the dismay of the education “reform” community, the Democratic Party platform language adopted this year in Philadelphia was far less friendly toward charter schools than in previous election cycles. The Clintons are longtime charter school supporters, but late last year Hillary Clinton seemingly took a page from critics’ playbook when she stated that most of these schools “don’t take the hardest-to-teach kids, or, if they do, they don’t keep them.” The comment was praised by teachers’ unions, who are among the loudest critics of charter schools. (Hillary Clinton’s remark in July at the NEA convention that traditional public schools and charter schools should share ideas was met with boos.) The tug-of-war within Democratic circles is also playing out in the blue state of Massachusetts, where charter supporters and opponents have spent millions of dollars in a clash over a ballot initiative that would lift the state’s cap on charter school expansion.

— Christopher Edley, an informal policy adviser to Hillary Clinton’s campaign, told Morning Education in New York on Thursday evening that “there’s much about the NAACP resolution with which she would agree.” Edley said that “to the extent that the NAACP is concerned with ensuring that charter schools are held accountable for student success in a way that is at least similar to how other public schools [are], the NAACP is right and she agrees with that.” He added that Clinton is concerned with “ensuring that charters that are performing poorly are either improved or eliminated” while at the same time “ensuring that when there are good lessons to be learned from charters, that we make sure to try to export those to the rest of the public school system.”

— The NAACP vote has drawn a lot of attention — and resistance. The New York Times and Washington Post editorial boards have urged the NAACP to think twice before passing the resolution. Earlier this week, Kevin P. Chavous, the founder of Democrats for Education Reform, said the moratorium vote would be “a new form of Jim Crow.” Charter school groups, such as the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, have been urging their members to call the NAACP and tell them to shoot down the resolution. The pro-charter group and the Black Alliance for Educational Options are planning to meet in the same Cincinatti hotel where the NAACP will take its vote Saturday morning.

— “It matters in a sense that 700,000 black students are currently attending charter schools,” said Nina Rees, president of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. Noting the vote on the Democratic platform, Rees said there’s a heightened “sense of urgency on our side to make sure the civil rights community doesn’t ignore the benefits of charters to black students.” Much is at stake on Saturday for charter critics, too, Heilig said: “If the NAACP doesn’t protect the rights of kids in charter schools, who’s going to do it?” Read the proposed resolution here.

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TEACHERS UNION LOOKS FORWARD ON ESSA: When it comes to getting its voice heard in developing state plans under the Every Student Succeeds Act, National Education Association President Lily Eskelsen Garcia says the NEA is taking a “leave no state behind” approach. The teachers union has a web site, getessaright.org, with resources such as a “practice guide” on what the law says about testing requirements, so teachers and parents are better informed. Eskelsen Garcia told reporters during a briefing at NEA headquarters Thursday that the new law presents not an opportunity, but a “responsibility,” and if it’s not taken, then “shame on us.” “We get this right at the beginning, or it’s very hard to undo something that’s done poorly,” Eskelsen Garcia said.

— The law says state accountability plans under ESSA must include at least one indicator of school quality and student support, which NEA has dubbed the “opportunity dashboard” indicator. NEA officials are pushing for the indicators to be based on “equity” issues. Eskelsen Garcia said looking at resources available to students will show where kids “don’t have what they need.” She said that under the No Child Left Behind law, “test and punish was an excuse to ignore the incredible gaps in resources between the ‘have schools’ and the ‘have not’ schools.” NEA is also getting the word out about “test audits” that can be done under the law to help identify where there are duplicative or unnecessary standardized tests.

— Speaking of teachers unions, Eskelsen Garcia will join American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten at a labor rally on Saturday in Philadelphia. The rally is a get-out-the-vote event in support of Hillary Clinton and Senate candidate Katie McGinty, a Democrat who is challenging Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.). It starts at 10 a.m.

GLOUCESTER COUNTY SCHOOL BOARD v. G.G.: Supreme Court justices could decide today whether to take up a challenge to an appeals court ruling requiring a Virginia school district to accommodate a transgender high school student’s request to use the boys’ bathroom. The case is the first challenge to the administration’s guidance on transgender students, and the Supreme Court decision could impact dozens of ongoing cases around the country. Just four of the eight justices are needed to grant certiorari and hear the case. In August, by a 5-3 vote, the justices put the appeals court ruling on hold — which many took to suggest that the high court would ultimately take up the case.

— Meanwhile in Minnesota, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a motion yesterday in support of a transgender student at the center of a lawsuit over whether students can use locker rooms that don’t align with their gender at birth. The lawsuit was filed last month against the Education Department and ISD 706, a school district in Minnesota, by a group of parents and students who oppose the administration’s guidance on transgender issues — and the school district’s subsequent compliance. The lawsuit came after the district allowed a transgender girl to use the girls’ locker room in her high school. ACLU is seeking to intervene on the transgender student’s behalf.

TRUMP LAYS OUT HIGHER ED PLAN: Donald Trump on Thursday called the rising cost of college a "crisis" that he would fix in part by capping student loan payments at 12.5 percent of a graduate's income — and forgiving the loans altogether after 15 years. Federal loan borrowers currently have the option of capping monthly payments at 10 percent of their discretionary income and can have loans forgiven after 20 years. Trump's higher education comments also included using the tax code to pressure colleges with massive endowments to use some of that money to cut tuition, an idea Trump has floated before and something that has been explored by Republicans in Congress. Trump said he would also cut "costly" federal regulations and force colleges to pass those savings onto students by reducing tuition. "We have a lot of power over the colleges," Trump said. The Republican nominee also vowed to end political correctness on college campuses, which he said "has transformed our institutions of higher education from ones who fostered spirited debate to a place of extreme censorship."

RYAN SPEAKING TO COLLEGE REPUBLICANS — BUT NOT ABOUT TRUMP: House Speaker Paul Ryan is in Wisconsin today, talking to College Republicans at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Ryan plans to talk about liberal progressivism, which he sees as a “failed approach” — and also an approach where Hillary Clinton will “double down.” The UW College Republicans, led by Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s son Alex Walker, are a somewhat rare group in that they actually endorsed Donald Trump. Many College Republican groups — including the national chapter — have denounced the Republican nominee.

ICYMI: DEVRY LATEST FOR-PROFIT HIT BY FEDS: For-profit college DeVry University will have to post $68 million in collateral and has been placed on a heightened cash monitoring status in a settlement the Education Department announced Thursday. The school also agreed to change some of its marketing claims — specifically that since 1975, 90 percent of its graduates had landed jobs. Those marketing claims are at the center of an ongoing dispute between the college and the federal government. The Federal Trade Commission is suing DeVry, alleging that the major for-profit college operator misled students about their job and salary prospects after graduation. The Education Department is also investigating the school, and has previously ordered the college to “cease making such representations without possessing student-specific information that substantiates the representations.”

— DeVry will only be allowed to participate in federal student aid programs through a provisional program — for as long as five years, under an agreement between the Education Department and the school. To receive Title IV funds, DeVry has to comply with a list of requirements, including dropping any claims referencing the year 1975. DeVry University has also been placed on Heightened Cash Monitoring 1, a method of payment that will require the institution to provide documentation of qualifying expenses before accessing federal financial aid funds. Read more here.

ITT TECH SAYS DISCIPLINE BY FEDS WAS ‘VERY UNEXPECTED’: The now-shuttered for-profit college ITT Tech was caught off guard by the harsh Education Department punishment that ultimately put it out of business, according to email records obtained by POLITICO. The records show communications between an ITT executive and Florida’s for-profit college oversight agency during a two-week period after the feds banned the college from enrolling new students using federal financial aid.

— “This is an unprecedented time for career colleges,” wrote ITT’s regulatory affairs manager, Thomas Brouwer, in an Aug. 26 email to the state agency, the Commission for Independent Education. A day earlier, when ITT Tech had just been notified by the Education Department of the enrollment ban and other penalties, Brouwer told Florida officials, “that letter was completely unexpected and obviously we are consulting with counsel right now. Additionally, the ITT/ESI board is convening for an emergency meeting within the hour.”

— Florida was one of the places most affected by ITT Tech’s Sept. 6 closure, as the Sunshine State had some 7,400 students attending nearly a dozen ITT campuses. Much of the email back-and-forth focuses on attempts to identify schools where displaced ITT students could finish their programs. According to the emails, a member of the Florida oversight agency, Nancy Bradley, expressed an interest in enrolling ITT students at her own for-profit school, Daytona College. Florida’s oversight agency is dominated by for-profit industry executives, and has been criticized in the past for potential conflicts of interest. A Florida Department of Education spokeswoman said that only one former ITT student chose to enroll at Daytona College, and “a discussion with ITT by any school owner, even one that is a commissioner, does not constitute a conflict of interest.”

REPORT ROLL CALL

— New America is releasing a report calling on Indiana to invest more in its fledgling Pre-K program. Read it here.

— Many K-12 schools are failing to designate Title IX coordinators, a new report by the Feminist Majority Foundation found. Read it here.

SYLLABUS

— Nearly a third of Ohio's 65 charter-school sponsors given failing grades by Education Department: Columbus Dispatch.

— Kansas colleges moving ahead with campus carry plans: The Chronicle of Higher Education.

— Texas closely watching nine “high-risk” for-profit colleges: Houston Chronicle.

— LeBron James launches new “institute” at University of Akron: Cleveland Plain Dealer

— UVA dean speaks out on retracted “Rolling Stone” rape article: ABC News

— Massachusetts governor to push charters in New York City: The Boston Globe

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