NM needs accountability, not charter moratorium

It is baffling that Sen. Daniel Ivey-Soto is calling for a moratorium on new charter schools. After all, he is the legal counsel for one of the top-ranked schools in the state and knows charter innovation can deliver great results to students and taxpayers alike.

While Ivey-Soto says he is just trying to slow charter foes’ attempts to de-fund the small public schools in a worsening budget year, it would make real shortand long-term financial sense to demand accountability from all schools. But then, the Albuquerque Democrat is also legal counsel for a few of the worstperforming charters and has received thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from folks happy with the state’s abysmal educational status quo.

One of his clients, the Albuquerque Institute of Math and Science at UNM, exemplifies the innovation and achievement all schools — traditional and charter alike — should aspire to. AIMS has a climbing overall ‘A’ grade from the state three years running, with “A’s” for academic growth of its highest- and lowest-performing students, a 94.8 percent four-year graduation rate, and a No. 1 compared to its peers in educating English-language learners, students with disabilities, ethnicities, as well as economically disadvantaged and mobile students. The U.S. Department of Education has designated it a Blue Ribbon School.

So why would Ivey-Soto call for a moratorium on that kind of academic attainment in the name of saving a few new-school-startup bucks, when he could save taxpayers a heck of a lot more by demanding results for the hundreds of millions of K-12 tax dollars spent annually on all public schools? Perhaps because two of his other clients — the ACE Leadership and Health Leadership charters — got “F” grades from the state, a third, Tech Leadership, had a 63 percent daily absentee rate, and accountability can be a dirtier word than taxes in the New Mexico Senate.

Ivey-Soto says he’s tried to push school accountability but always gets shut down by colleagues, so he says that to protect an important segment of charter funding he switched gears and called for the moratorium during a Legislative Education Study Committee meeting this month. He was preaching to the choir. The LESC has long waged war on charters based on the smalls-schools funding formula adjustment they receive rather than demanding quality performance from all of the state’s public schools.

The LESC report says charters collect an average of $8,728 per-student statewide versus $7,639 per-student at traditional school districts. (It skips the part about traditional school districts getting hundreds of millions in tax dollars for capital expenditures.)

Ivey-Soto’s recent campaign disclosures show he has received plenty of money from those who support the state’s shameful educational status quo, including $3,500 from Sen. Mimi Stewart’s PAC, $2,500 from the Albuquerque Teacher’s Federation, $1,250 from Senate Majority Leader Michael Sanchez’s PAC and $1,000 from the The National Education Association-New Mexico PAC. All have opposed promising education reforms such as retention of third-graders who can’t read at grade level after multiyear interventions.

In New Mexico just seven of every 10 students graduate high school on time, and half of those who do need remedial courses to get into college. The numbers are worse at APS. Quality charter schools raise the bar and require traditional schools to up their games as parents vote with their feet. Yet Ivey-Soto claims school choice is a “luxury.”

What’s a real luxury — especially in what is shaping up to be a budget crisis — is tolerating sub-par performance on the public’s dime. Ivey-Soto is in the important position of seeing the best and the worst when it comes to charter school performance. He should be pushing the Legislature to require evaluations and closures of schools that fail to serve students.

That, rather than shutting down innovation, would provide real budgetary savings.