Politics should not prevent access to high quality charter schools for the children of O‘ahu’s North Shore.  Unfortunately, that is exactly what is happening during this cycle of the Hawaii State Charter School Applications. This petition is to ensure that the Hawaii public charter school applicants are evaluated based on the published Evaluation Criteria and follows the Application Evaluation Process outlined in the 2013 application materials.

The State Public Charter School Commission 2013 Request for Applications directions states, “The Evaluation Team evaluates each application on its own merits against the published evaluation criteria.”

Yet in the first paragraph of the staff's recommendation report for the only applicant group to be recommended, the evaluation team states that the applicant group “demonstrates a compelling need for a charter school in the challenging rural region.” A “compelling need” is not listed anywhere in the application criteria and if it was, the North Shore Middle School has clearly outlined their need within the application and numerous supporting documents. This statement shows that the evaluation team did not use the evaluation criteria to make school recommendations, instead making recommendations against the Applicant Code of Conductwhich  states Commissioners and the Evaluation Team are obligated to make decisions and recommendations in the best interests of the students, free from personal or political influences.

This application cycle, the North Shore Middle School, NSMS, took the feedback and suggestions from last year’s evaluators and commissioners, and incorporated them into their second application. They teamed up with the largest charter school service provider in the nation, and a local consulting firm who severed as an evaluator during the last cycle, to improve the application that was nearly approved last year. Countless hours were spent seeking out and incorporating the expertise of charter school advocates to improve this year’s application.

NSMS’s application was written to, and met the criteria outlined in the application packets provided by the commission staff and according to multiple charter school experts, on a national and local level, is a very strong application. Yet the evaluation report says we did not meet the criteria in any areas.  How can this be? Perhaps it is because the evaluation report was filled with many incorrect and misleading statements and contained numerous subjective determinations.

The evaluation report claimed that the NSMS’s leadership team lacks capacity.  However their application demonstrates that this is not true. Their team has two Ph.D.’s, one in Business Administration and the other in Political Science, both are associate professors at University of Hawaii.  The team also has an IT specialist with over 20 years of experience developing and managing major technology upgrades in large distributed computing environments and the largest charter school service provider in the country servicing over 135 schools nationally. If a leadership team with this much varied experience and expertise does not demonstrate capacity, we would like to know what the specific undisclosed criteria to meet capacity is. We would also like to compare the resumes of the single applicant group that the commission staff did recommend to ensure the criteria is used consistently across all applicant groups.  

The numerous incorrect statements found in the NSMS’s evaluation report and the many subjective determinations made by the evaluation team members leads to the question, why were there so many errors in the report, and why did the evaluation team not use the required evaluation criteria to determine their recommendation?  Does a bias exist within the evaluation process or Act 130, or is this just politics in Hawai‘i?

None of the evaluation’s team stated concerns would prevent NSMS from being successful in meeting their goal of creating a high quality charter school for middle school students on the North Shore.  The North Shore needs an alternative and has turned in a complete application that meets all the eligibility criteria and is simply waiting to be approved or denied by the Charter School Commissioners on May 8th.  Please put politics aside and support the North Shore Middle Schools application. Give the North Shore the chance to have a high quality middle school.

 

Thank you for your support.

 

Notes:

The State Public Charter School Commission 2013 Request for Applications

The State Public Charter School Commission 2013 Evaluation Criteria

http://sharepoint.spcsc.hawaii.gov/SPCSC/Documents/VII_Committee Action on Kau Learning Academy Application - FINAL.pdf pg 3

http://www.nscharter.org/uploads/1/0/5/0/10505852/nsms_response_to_evaluation_report_final.pdf

http://www.nscharter.org/uploads/1/0/5/0/10505852/website_app_v2.pdf

The recent lift on the cap of the number of charter school in Hawaii was a direct result of the Federal Race to the Top grant requirement to lift charter school caps and adopt Common Core standards.  DOE administration has always shown resistance to charter schools in this state but the BOE was willing to lift the cap in order to be awarded 75 million dollars for meeting the requirements of eligibility.

National Association of Charter School Authorizers (“NACSA”), has played a significant role in the trend that is transferring power from locally created charter schools to national organizations.  Recent research from Stanford shows that the increased percentage of Educational Management Organizations run charter schools has not improved student achievement, indicating very little difference between student performance between charter and traditional public schools.  See Diann Woodard. The Corporate Takeover of Public Education