daVinci Institute

“Former da Vinci Institute teacher sentenced to five to 20 years inprison.” MLive.com (MI), 8/22/2012

JACKSON, MI – A former da Vinci Institute teacher is going to prison for five to 20 years for having a sexual relationship with a 15-year-old student.

Jackson County Circuit Judge John McBain sentenced Matthew Lusby, 28, Wednesday morning for first-degree criminal sexual conduct.

Lusby pleaded guilty to the charge in July.He admitted to having oral sex with the girl early this year. She was then a student of Lusby, who worked as a math teacher at the public charter school in Summit Township...

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“Former da Vinci teacher pleads guilty to first-degree criminal sexualconduct.” MLive.com (MI), 7/24/2012

JACKSON, MI – A former da Vinci Institute teacher who had a sexual relationship with a 15-year-old student pleaded guilty on Tuesday to a single count of first-degree criminal sexual conduct...

Da Vinci hired Lusby in the summer of 2009. He resigned on Feb. 23 to take a substitute teaching position at another school, but did not reach an agreement with the other district.

When hired, Lusby passed a criminal background check.

This is his first brush with the law, Rezmierski said.

At da Vinci, Lusby was told he needed to improve classroom control and a “passive aggressive nature toward students,” and once had to apologize for throwing a referees flag at a football game.

Last fall, the principal and superintendent told him he should not be giving the girl a ride to school, especially when alone...

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WayPoint Academy

“Former WayPoint school chief Barb Stellard's case moves to felony court.” 

MUSKEGON, MI -- Barbara Stellard, the former director of WayPoint Academy in Muskegon Township, will face trial on multiple felony counts after waiving her preliminary examination on charges she obtained state school aid under false pretenses and falsified school records...

Because she waived the hearing, Stellard's case was bound over to 14th Circuit Court for trial.

Charges against Stellard include two counts of obtaining between $1,000 and $20,000 by false pretenses, which is a felony punishable up to five years in prison. She is charged with seven counts of falsifying school records, which is a high-court misdemeanor and carries a maximum penalty of two years in prison plus suspension of a teaching certificate for five years...

The case stems from allegations Stellard inflated WayPoint's student counts so the district would receive state money for which it wasn't eligible. Stellard was head of the school from 2002 to 2010.

Her defense attorney, Terry J. Nolan, has said someone else falsified the records and Stellard just signed off on them without criminal intent...

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Linden Charter Academy

“Teacher wins $500K judgment in suit vs. Linden Charter Academy over firing because of racial joke.” Flint Journal (MI), 7/19/11

MT. MORRIS TOWNSHIP, Michigan — A charter school organization is weighing an appeal after a jury awarded more than $500,000 to a former Linden Charter Academy teacher who was fired for what his attorney said was a racial joke...

The school referred all comment to its parent company, the Grand Rapids-based National Heritage Academies...

Lenhoff said Hecht heard many black employees at Linden Charter Academy make racial jokes and that they were not punished.

Hecht had an excellent record on racial relations and had no prior record of any issues with the school, Lenhoff said.

According to the lawsuit, the teacher’s aide complained to the principal and Hecht was called into the office. Lenhoff said Hecht apologized to the teacher’s aide in the meeting...

Hecht, who had worked at the school for more than eight years, is now working as a machine operator at Dow Corning Corp. in Midland and has been unable to get hired for a teaching position.

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Detroit charter high schools (test scores lower than DPS)

“Charter high schools in Detroit not making grade: Test scores for schools often trail DPS students' average.” Detroit News 7/7/11 

Once touted as a solution to Detroit's public school woes, charter high schools are often doing just about as poorly — and in many cases worse — at educating students and getting them ready for college, a Detroit News analysis of recent test data shows.

Of 25 charters in Detroit or nearby, only six had higher math or science proficiency scores than Detroit Public Schools' average on the most recent Michigan Merit Exam, with most of the others doing worse than the district.

More charters did poorer in reading and writing as well; only in social studies did more charters surpass rather than trail DPS.

The results raise questions about the district's plans to authorize additional charters in its search for improvement and could also renew the debate over whether charters are the answer to the riddle of urban education, where multiple strategies are often producing the same poor results...

One of the largest nationwide charter-schools studies found that nearly half of charter schools do as well as the local public school; more than a third did worse, and just 17 percent did better...

Concerns about the quality of the DPS schools and student safety have caused tens of thousands of parents to choose charter schools or leave the city altogether in search of better educational opportunities. In the past decade, DPS has lost nearly 100,000 students as charter schools and suburban classrooms have swelled with the arrival of former DPS schoolchildren.

Charter schools remain an important part of the reforms proposed by the district, though plans to turn over dozens of schools to charter operators, proposed by former DPS Emergency Manager Robert Bobb, have been scaled back to five new charter schools authorized by DPS...

Dan Quisenberry, president of the Michigan Association of Public School Academies, said research in Michigan has shown charters routinely exceed DPS on the Michigan Education Assessment Program (MEAP) tests given to children in grades three to nine.

But he said the relatively poor performance of high school students in charters raises questions. Quisenberry said students perform better the longer they are in charter schools and it's unclear how long the high school students have been in the charter school setting. "These numbers are important, and they should make us concerned," he said...

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Vanguard Charter School Academy

NEW CHARTER SCHOOL FACES CRITICISM OF ITS CURRICULUM. Business Courier (Cincinnati, OH) 21 July 2003

Cincinnati's newest charter school will be managed by a national for-profit company that has faced lawsuits for allowing religious instruction and denying services to special education students.

Grand Rapids, Mich.-based National Heritage Academies will manage Alliance Academy in Evanston, which is renting the former St. Mark's Catholic School and will open in late August…

In 1998, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a suit on behalf of parents who alleged that NHA was violating the separation of church and state at its Vanguard Charter Academy in Grand Rapids. The suit was dismissed in 2000 after the school put policies in place to prevent the types of actions alleged…

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ACLU OF MICHIGAN CHALLENGES CHARTER SCHOOL FOR CHURCH-STATE VIOLATIONS. ACLU news release 01 Apr 1999 

DETROIT -- Acting on behalf of five parents, the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan today challenged a Kent County charter school for violating the First Amendment's protections of separation of church and state.

Vanguard Charter School Academy sanctioned prayer in the school, allowed the distribution of religious materials during class, allowed a nearby church to use its facilities rent-free to conduct worship, conducted a mandatory staff retreat with distinct religious overtones and taught creationism as an accepted scientific theory, according to the amended complaint filed today in United States District Court.

Vanguard Charter School Academy teaches children from kindergarten through seventh grade. Like all other charter schools in Michigan, Vanguard is a public school and must follow Michigan's code for public school academies. It is managed by National Heritage Academy, one of the largest management companies in Michigan.

The ACLU is suing on behalf of five parents of students at the school…

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George Washington Carver Academy

EX-TREASURER OF HIGHLAND PARK CHARTER SCHOOL CHARGED WITH EMBEZZLEMENT; March 11, 2011; The Detroit News (MI) 

Highland Park— The former treasurer of a charter school has been charged with embezzlement for allegedly writing herself a $25,000 check on behalf of the school to buy a house in Detroit.

Attorney General Bill Schuette announced today the felony embezzlement charge was filed against Shantell Bell, formerly of George Washington Carver Academy, which has 527 students.

A Michigan State Police investigation revealed Bell allegedly wrote the check to an Ohio title company and recorded the expense as "textbooks" for the kindergarten through eighth-grade school. She was arraigned Friday in Highland Park's 30th District Court on one count of embezzlement over $20,000. The crime is punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a $75,000 fine…

According to Schuette, Bell had said Platinum Title Services was a textbook company. In reality, it was the company used to complete the real estate transaction.

Bell's former boyfriend reported the theft to authorities and the investigation began, Schuette said…

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AFTER CHEATING SCANDAL, SCHOOL LEARNS LESSONS IN TAKING TESTS; March 10, 2011; USA Today, 

HIGHLAND PARK, Mich. — The teachers and principal at George Washington Carver Academy, a charter school here, have learned firsthand what happens when an official probe concludes that the staff cheated on a standardized test.

Monitors sent by the Michigan Department of Education have watched over teachers here for the past two years as state tests have been administered. As a group, teachers have been forced to review, line by line, all of the state's testing rules…

Educators at Carver cheated on the tests in many ways, stopping just short of giving students the answers, the state investigation found. Plastic-wrapped exams were opened days before the state allowed, so students could be coached. Teachers gave students hints during the exams in classrooms where interior windows were covered with paper to keep anyone from looking inside. And when students asked questions, teachers showed them how to get the right answer, the state said…

"We had the test booklet," a fifth-grader told investigators about the writing test. The teacher "was teaching us how to do it. It was nice and clear."

A fourth-grader called the test "pretty easy" because the teacher "gave us ideas for the topic sentence and the ending sentence. ... She was trying to help us do our best."…

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Kalamazoo Advantage Academy

CLOSING OF KALAMAZOO ADVANTAGE ACADEMY A LESSON IN COMPLEXITY OF CHARTER SCHOOLS; July 04, 2008; Kalamazoo Gazette (MI) 

KALAMAZOO -- The sign outside Kalamazoo Advantage Academy reads: "Enrolling for fall," along with a phone number.

But inside the two-story building at the corner of Burdick and South streets, the heart of Kalamazoo's downtown, staffers and students are bitterly mulling the shutdown of the decade-old charter school, which serves about 270 students in kindergarten through eighth grade.

Although summer school is in session for about 40 students, Advantage will not reopen this fall. Grand Valley State University has declined to renew the school's charter, and there's no other sponsor to be found.

GVSU maintains Advantage has long been a failing school, with faltering enrollment and low test scores, and says it is being a responsible charter authorizer in pulling the plug, now that its 10-year contract has expired.

But dig a little deeper and a more complicated story emerges, one that raises questions about GVSU's practices and procedures…

Advantage had its own data analysis done by Sharif Shakrani, co-director of MSU's Center for Education Policy. An expert in educational data, Shakrani is a former director of the design and analysis division of the National Center for Education Statistics and a deputy executive director of the National Assessment Governing Board.

• Download Shakrani's report, part 1
• Download Shakrani's report, part 2

Shakrani's report said Advantage performed "significantly lower" than similar schools in 2005-06. But in the past two school years, he says, the Advantage students have shown much stronger results. His report highlights the strong academic growth among students who have been at Advantage for more than a year, and concludes the school is doing an "admirable job" with a very high-risk population.

"I'd keep (the school) open," Shakrani said this week. "My analysis indicates they're making significant progress. ... Usually you would close a school when it's regressing, but this school is getting better, not worse."

Ed Richardson, head of GVSU's Charter School Office, said his office has "carefully reviewed" the analysis by Shakrani.

"Nothing in them makes us think that our decision not to renew the contract was incorrect," Richardson said in an e-mailed statement.

Policy questions

In two other areas of contention by Advantage, GVSU's Charter School Office seems to have different policies and practices than other charter-school offices in Michigan.

For instance, after putting Advantage on notice in November 2006, GVSU did not establish specific academic goals or targets for the school to work on to keep their charter…

But he said the Advantage situation points out what he sees as the biggest problem in the charter-school movement: The failure to establish clear goals and then hold a school accountable for meeting those goals.

From his standpoint, Advantage wasn't held accountable for years. Now GVSU may be forcing accountablity -- but without clear goals, it gives the appearance of acting arbitrarily.

"I want these closures to work well," Miron said. "If they don't work well, what does that say to other authorizers who need to do the same thing?"

Outsiders also express surprise that GVSU's Charter School Office could let Advantage's contract expire without a vote by the GVSU Board of Trustees.

The other five charter school authorizers said such a decision would have to go before their board…

"Contracts have a beginning date and an end date for good reason," McLogan said. "Possession of a charter agreement is not an entitlement to perpetual operation."

Others say that philosophy can lead to disrupting the lives of charter-school students and employees with little or no explanation.

Because of the state's cap on the number of charter contracts, schools that lose their contracts have limited ability to find another authorizer, which means nonrenewal of a charter becomes, in effect, an order to close. And why would anybody would want to risk starting a charter school if authorizers can just walk away at the end of a three- or five- or seven-year contract?...

McLogan says GVSU dropped the contract because they don't want to continue sponsorship of a school they see as failing.

Huth says she wonders if there might be another motive. She speculates GVSU might want to grant charters to more middle-class academies, which tend to be larger than urban charters and have much better test scores.

She notes that GVSU receives about $225 per student from its schools as an administrative fee -- the GVSU Charter School Office generated more than $3 million in revenues last year among its 30 academies -- which means larger schools offer much more profit…

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