Charter Schools

Six charter schools involved in a widespread cheating scandal are likely to earn a reprieve that will allow them to remain open, Los Angeles school officials said. The unofficial word came from new Los Angeles schools Supt. John Deasy, who said he was satisfied that the Crescendo charter school group had taken appropriate steps to deal with the problems on the South Los Angeles campuses. "It is likely that the school[s] will remain open as a result of the decisions they have made, who they have fired and safeguards put in place that we have monitored," Deasy said in an email.

Over the last decade, a quiet revolution took root in the nation's second-largest school district. Fueled by money and emboldened by clout from some of the city's most powerful figures, charter schools began a period of explosive growth that has challenged the status quo in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Today, Los Angeles is home to more than 160 charter schools, far more than any other U.S. city. Charter enrollment is up nearly 19% this year from last, while enrollment in traditional L.A. public schools is down.

Charter school advocates are mounting a campaign against a proposed moratorium on new charters in the Los Angeles Unified School District. The moratorium is one provision of a resolution, by school board member Steve Zimmer, scheduled for discussion Tuesday. Any moratorium would violate state law, the California Charter Schools Assn. asserted in a Friday letter to L.A. Unified. The proposal "very clearly violates the Charter Schools Act," wrote the group's general counsel, Ricardo J. Soto.

The leading organization of charter schools in California is proposing a new way to evaluate them, one that could lead to the closure of many low-performing schools. The proposal, being unveiled today by the California Charter Schools Assn., comes on the heels of a Stanford University study released earlier this week that found wide variation in quality among the state's roughly 800 charter schools.

Charter schools are on the cusp of national stardom. After gaining increased acceptance in the last decade, they now are central to school reform under the Obama administration, which wants states to remove any limits on their growth. Charter schools are publicly funded but operate free of many state and school district regulations. The idea behind their creation was to empower schools to make their own hiring and curriculum decisions in exchange for guarantees in their contracts -- or charters -- to deliver high scholastic achievement in a certain amount of time or risk closure.

Los Angeles-area charter schools have won a $60-million grant to develop a teacher-evaluation system based at least partly on student test scores. The grant, part of $335 million in related awards announced Thursday by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, represents the largest private funding for an initiative of this sort. "Teachers matter more to student achievement, more than any other factor inside our school building," Melinda Gates said. "This is something we know absolutely for certain at this point."

At a time when many nonprofits are struggling to remain afloat, watching contributions sputter amid an ailing economy, two small Bay Area charter schools are having a banner year, with hundreds of thousands of dollars gushing into their coffers. Big energy companies, telecommunication interests and Indian tribes are lining up to write checks. So are unions, Sacramento lobbyists and Hollywood celebrities. Many of these donors have something to gain in addition to the warm feelings and tax deductions that come with helping a worthy cause: a chance to get in the good graces of Gov. Jerry Brown.

Local charter schools will receive more money to educate disabled students and more freedom from the Los Angeles Unified School District in the process, under an agreement approved Tuesday by the Board of Education. The board unanimously approved the pact, which will cost the cash-strapped school system millions of dollars because the district will now give charter schools state money that it previously kept for traditional schools' special education programs. But failing to make the deal could have cost the district many millions more if charters exercise a new right to contract for special education programs.

An organization that promotes charter schools announced Wednesday that it will spend $8 million to help community groups in five California school districts, including Los Angeles Unified, open new charter campuses. The funding is part of a new initiative by the California Charter Schools Assn. to boost school choice and public awareness of how charter schools operate. The "My School!" campaign aims to double the number of parents who have access to charter schools, mainly through www.myschool.

Re "Study Doubts Charter School Success Claims," Dec. 4: The UCLA charter school study is misleading and inaccurate. There have been numerous in-depth studies of charter schools conducted nationally and locally over the last several years. WestEd Policy and USC evaluated LAUSD in 1998, the U.S. Department of Education sponsored a national study in 1997 and 1998 and in 1996 the Little Hoover Commission examined California charter schools. Each of these studies identified positive results from the charter school movement.