Issue Position: Parent Choice in Public Schools

Issue Position

No child should be forced to attend a failing school because of where they live. Over the past two decades, our state has adopted policies to give parents more power to decide which schools their children will attend, and more options when their neighborhood schools are failing to provide a quality education. In my experience at Green Dot Public Schools, opening 9 new charter high schools in some of LA's toughest neighborhoods, I saw how students benefit when schools have more flexibility and parents and families play a larger role in students' education. I support both quality charter schools and the Parent Empowerment Act. As State Superintendent, I'll champion these important vehicles for parent choice.

Charter Schools

Charter schools are publicly funded, open to all students, and free of charge. I believe that charter schools play an important role in California's public school system. Charters offer parents alternatives when they aren't satisfied with their local schools. They allow local school communities to create schools with substantial flexibility from the California Education Code and, if run effectively, can serve as good examples of the innovations in teaching and learning that can occur when schools have more flexibility. Up until 2006, I was the President of Green Dot Public Schools, and spent almost five years as the President and COO of that charter school network. All of our schools were opened near schools that had been underperforming for decades. Parents were desperate for alternatives for their children. We empowered and supported our principals and teachers, engaged parents, brought technology into our classrooms and helped a lot more students succeed than would have otherwise. Because of the flexibility we had as a charter organization, we were able to make decisions related to budget, curriculum, and staffing rather than have the state make them for us. I support quality charter schools.

While California has the most charter schools and charter school students of any state, our charter schools are too often an afterthought when state policies are made. The challenges faced by charter schools reflect this neglect: lower per-pupil funding, delayed funding, inadequate access to facilities, and more and more unnecessary regulations. As State Superintendent, I'll work to address these issues, fight to maintain flexibility, and support the continued growth and success of the charter school movement in California.

Although I strongly support the continued success and expansion of quality charter schools, I do believe that there are some unintended consequences of a choice system that need to be addressed at the policy level. Oftentimes, charter schools will not have the same proportion of children with unique situations such as being homeless, having severe special needs, or being in the foster or juvenile delinquency systems. This can be an unintended byproduct of a choice system whereby many students with significant needs may not have families that are making education choices for them. As State Superintendent, I will work to address these types of issues through policy both at a state and local level. LCFF provides a starting roadmap as more funding is provided for the students with the greatest needs. Some additional work in this area could lead to policy that would be helpful to all public schools in California.

We also need to invest in bringing charter schools and traditional public schools together. Charter schools were created in part to act as innovation labs for traditional school districts. There is not enough of this happening. As State Superintendent, I will play a key role in enabling charters and traditional schools to share their quality practices. Additionally, I will work closely with traditional school districts and the charter community to ensure that charters that are not performing well are shut down.

Finally, I will work to change the charter vs. traditional public school dialogue. There is too much conflict in the broader education dialogue between charters and traditional public schools. We need to reshape the conversation to focus on how we most effectively serve all students well and how charter schools and traditional schools can coexist and collaborate in a way that is effective for students. As State Superintendent, I will work with school districts to help them get similar flexibilities from the Ed Code that charters have so that they are able to most effectively lift up teaching and learning in their schools. As mentioned above, we will work with leaders of charters and traditional public schools to develop policies and systems that help negate any unintended consequences. We will help facilitate collaboration on teaching and learning. Ultimately the focus needs to be on what the best public schools in California are doing (traditional public and charter) and replicating that as fast as possible regardless of governance structure.

Parent Empowerment Act

When local schools persistently fail to educate students, parents should have the power to force school districts to take aggressive action. I support implementation of the Parent Empowerment Act, adopted in 2010. This law gives a majority of parents at a persistently failing school the power, through petition, to force the district to bring in new school leadership, replace at least half the school staff, or convert the school to charter. I'll fight efforts to weaken the Parent Empowerment Act, and my administration will invest in new ways to communicate with parents to ensure they know their rights under this significant new law.

Source