{"id":7062,"date":"2014-03-10T15:25:39","date_gmt":"2014-03-10T19:25:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/shermandorn.com\/wordpress\/?p=7062"},"modified":"2014-03-10T15:33:29","modified_gmt":"2014-03-10T19:33:29","slug":"how-charter-co-location-looks-from-afar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/?p=7062","title":{"rendered":"How charter co-location looks from afar"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the past week, there has been a political firestorm in New York as advocates of charter schools in New York City raised hell over the denial of co-location privileges for a minority of new charter schools that were to start in fall 2014. The outgoing administration of Michael Bloomberg (and his last schools chancellor Dennis Walcott) had given co-location authority (to occupy space in school buildings) to several dozen new charters before Bill DeBlasio was sworn in, and DeBlasio’s appointee Chancellor Carmen Farina had initially blessed the majority of the co-location permissions. She had also denied co-location to a minority of those originally approved–nine, of which three were to be run by the Success Academy chain. At the end of last week’s political fusillade, Farina apparently reversed course<\/a>.<\/p>\n

From the social media I read, one would have thought DeBlasio had personally roughed up a few hundred children instead of appointing a chancellor who\u00a0approved the majority of these last-minute decisions<\/em> in the Bloomberg administration. In very few places did any critics of DeBlasio acknowledge that the removal of co-location authority was not going to affect\u00a0any<\/em>\u00a0individual child already in an operating charter school but rather theoretical, not-yet-operating charters. But rationality and perspective did not rule the day.\u00a0I read of DeBlasio’s “jihad” against charters and more moderate charter activists called “Chamberlainesque” for their wanting to talk about compromise solutions, both from people I usually think of as fairly rational (names removed to protect the guilty). On my Education Policy Noise Index<\/a>, each such incident racks up 10 or more points on the noise scale, and I suspect you could point to similar namecalling across the Big Apple in the last two weeks.<\/p>\n

So my first conclusion is that there is an epidemic of sinister attribution error in New York, and hundreds of partisans are indulging in my late oldest uncle’s favorite form of exercise: jumping to conclusions. (Yes, he was a New Yorker, generous to a fault, but not exactly the calmest guy in a debate.)<\/p>\n

From Florida, the co-location debate in New York looks like something clearly defined by the density of construction in the city and the legacy of Klein and Bloomberg’s political choices to turn charter schools into a wedge issue. The dynamic in Florida is different. Here, most charter operations are unsupported by hedge funds or any significant philanthropy, but the state legislature has put a hugely-disproportionate amount of capital spending into charter schools in the past few years, and the real-estate issue tied to charters is the rent that for-profit charter companies are charging their shell non-profit boards. In essence, with the latter, the Imagine and Mavericks charter chains look like they are each running a real-estate business with guaranteed high-rent customers<\/a> with the education as a way to legitimize the real-estate plunder.\u00a0So for my friends in New York, I hope you’ll understand that whatever problems you see with co-location, they look tame by Florida standards.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, it looks like the co-location debate has been framed as one of relative wealth\/wealthy connections (by many critics of co-location) or simple fairness and “for the kids” goodness (by plenty of defenders of co-location). As one of my interlocutors on social media observed, the political environment on the issue is toxic. Yeah, could have fooled me on that one. Here are the questions in my mind on capital construction, space use, and charter schools:<\/p>\n