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UW System has a new state ‘charter czar’ — the 3rd in past year
Seligman succeeds Latoya Holiday, who took over as director sometime this winter and then left to join the state Department of Public Instruction.
His salary is $103,000, Pitsch said. Twenty-two people applied for the position.
Seligman previously worked as assistant director of the UW Hillel Foundation at UW-Madison. He also practiced commercial and political law at Godfrey & Kahn, S.C. and taught high school Spanish in Washington, D.C.
He is from Madison and graduated from Madison School District. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Washington University in St. Louis, a Master’s in teaching from American University and a law degree from the UW-Madison.
He starts Aug. 1.
A majority of the taxpayer supported Madison school board rejected the proposed Madison Preparatory IB charter school. more.
‘Charter czar’ prepares launch as charter popularity plateaus
It can be easy to forget about the “charter czar.”
More than two years after his office was created within the University of Wisconsin System and more than a year after he was hired, the czar has yet to authorize a single charter school. His office doesn’t even have a website.
Education reformers can have some confidence he hasn’t just been loafing around these last 16 months, even as state education data suggest the popularity of charters could be waning.
The czar — also known as former legislative staffer and elementary school teacher Gary Bennett — said the website is slated to go up next week, as are two requests for proposals. One will be for a so-called recovery school aimed at letting teen addicts continue their education while getting treatment; the other will be for straight-up charter schools in either Milwaukee or Madison.
Bennett acknowledged getting familiar with the recovery school concept took some time. Among the funding models he’s looked at are those used by Hope Academy in Indianapolis and Insight Recovery School in Minnesota. To cover the $12,000 to $24,000 per-student cost generally seen at recovery schools, they have used city and district money, respectively, to augment state funding.
Wisconsin’s Charter “Czar”
Gary Bennett wants to assure you he’s not out to destroy the Madison School District.
The former legislative staffer leads the new Office of Educational Opportunity at the University of Wisconsin System. That makes him the unofficial “charter czar,” the guy who now has the ability to bypass local school boards and authorize independent charter schools in Madison and Milwaukee.
It’s a controversial idea, deemed by opponents as unnecessary at best, poisonous at worst. Critics believe independent charter schools siphon money and resources from traditional public schools. Supporters contend they’re needed to stimulate innovation and correct failures in the current system.
In an interview, Bennett acknowledged that his new role is viewed negatively by some, but he suggested he’s not the enemy. At times, he spoke rather kindly of the Madison School District.
“We have good schools here,” said Bennett, 33, who has lived in Madison since moving to the city in 2008 to attend UW Law School. “We just need more good schools in more areas.”
Related: Madison’s long term, disastrous reading results.
Obama’s education czar charters a course to Brooklyn
Carl Campanile & David Seifman:
In a dramatic show of White House support, President Obama’s education czar will visit a Brooklyn charter school Tuesday to help persuade the foot-dragging state Assembly to lift the cap on the number of charters, The Post has learned.
The timing of Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s trip is significant since New York has just two weeks to revamp its charter-school law ahead of the June 1 deadline for the state to submit its application for $700 million in federal education funds.
“I hope the Legislature will do the right thing by children,” Duncan told The Post yesterday.
Metro Nashville school board denies five charter school applications
Meanwhile, earlier this month, Cooper said he asked Nashville school leaders to figure out how they could carve up to $100 million out of the district’s budget for the current fiscal year, which ends June 30.
The school board’s denial of charter school applications is also in keeping with its overall trend in recent years. The debate over charter schools in Nashville has been one of the city’s most contentious.
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Critics say charter schools, which receive public money but are operated independently, pull students, money and resources away from zoned schools. Proponents have said they allow choices for parents and alleviate needs at some schools.
Nashville now is projected to spend $139 million on the city’s 28 charter schools, which enroll nearly 13,000 students.
Board members, who met Tuesday via an online video chatting platform due to the pandemic, considered applications for the following schools:
A majority of the Madison School District rejected the proposed Madison Preparatory Academy IB Charter school.
The University of Wisconsin “charter czar” can approve “independent charter schools” in Madison. One City Learning operates under this model.
Plan for Massachusetts Education “Czar” Threatens Reforms
Education reform is often stifled by the vested interests that resist accountability and new models like charter and pilot schools. In Massachusetts, the independence of the state Board of Education provided the continuity that allowed reform to be successfully implemented year after year.
The board was responsible for the initiatives that were the heart and soul of reform, like the MCAS exam, teacher testing, and academically rigorous curriculum frameworks. It was the board that followed a prudent course by creating rigorous charter school approval and closure processes.
Each of these reforms was the target of substantial resistance from a powerful and change-averse education establishment. Only an independent Board of Education, insulated from politics, could have made them a reality.
Despite these unparalleled successes, all we have achieved is now at risk. A proposal to eliminate the Board of Education’s independence seems to be breezing through the Legislature. The proposal would make the board just another part of Governor Patrick’s administration and thus politicize an institution that has been insulated from politics since 1837, when Horace Mann was its first leader.
Badger Rock Middle School Contract
Notes and links on the Badger Rock Middle School Madison Style charter school (largely subject to the same teacher work rules and costs as the rest of the taxpayer supported Madison School District).
A majority of the Madison School District rejected the proposed Madison Preparatory Academy IB Charter school.
The University of Wisconsin “charter czar” can approve “independent charter schools” in Madison. One City Learning operates under this model.
On Madison’s lack of K-12 Diversity and choice
“The best thing my office can do is increase access to educational opportunities and increase equity,” he said. “The worst thing it can do is create fights for fights’ sake.”
Independent charter schools, while funded by state taxpayers, operate outside most traditional public school rules in a way that supporters say make them more effective and perhaps better able to address long-standing challenges, such as raising test scores for low-income and minority students.
Detractors counter they are a financial drain on the public school system with no guaranteed ability to offer students any better education.
The Madison School District, which already has the power to authorize independent charter schools but so far has not done so, remains in the detractors’ ranks.
“Gary knows how I feel about his office — that I think it’s unnecessary, that our board, like any school board, ought to be making decisions about how to serve students,” Cheatham said. “Our goal is to make that office obsolete
Much more on Gary Bennett, here.
Madison has continued to support non diverse K-12 governance despite long term, disastrous reading results and spending more than most, now around $18,000 per student.
A majority of the Madison school board rejected the proposed Madison preparatory academy IB charter school and the studio school.
Mayor could take Indianapolis Public Schools reins
Although he didn’t ask for it in his re-election campaign, Mayor Greg Ballard could become the boss of Indianapolis Public Schools in the coming year.
The most likely plan would include mayoral appointment of the School Board, combined with a decentralization of IPS. Schools would have an independence similar to what charter schools have, along with strict accountability to the mayor for performance.
A formal proposal along these lines will come from The Mind Trust, a local education reform organization led by David Harris, who was the city’s charter school czar during Bart Peterson’s administration. A shift in oversight of IPS would have to be approved by the General Assembly and Gov. Mitch Daniels. Informal talks about IPS reform took place earlier this year among Republican and Democratic leaders in the General Assembly as well as Indianapolis civic leaders.
Return of the One-Room Schoolhouse
Even among the nation’s woeful traditional big-city school districts, Detroit Public Schools is a particular abomination. Between falling into state receivership for the second time in the past 12 years, facing $327 million in budget deficits for the next four years, wrangling with scandals such as the travails of literacy-bereft now-former school board president Otis Mathis (who resigned last year after the district’s superintendent complained that he had engaged in lewd acts during meetings), and constant news about its failure to educate its students, the Motor City district has secured its place as the Superfund site of education.
So it wasn’t a surprise when Detroit’s state-appointed czar, Robert Bobb, announced on March 12 that the district would slash its deficit — and eliminate as much as $99 million in costs from operating its bureaucracy — by getting rid of 29 percent of the 142 dropout factories and failure mills. But instead of just shutting down the 41 schools (as the district originally planned to do) it would convert them into charter schools, handing off instruction, curriculum, and operations to nonprofits, parents groups, and others interested in running schools.
