Contact: Sean Roberts, Executive Director
Phone: 414-763-1261 or Cell 414-852-9876
Email: sean@milwaukeecharteradvocates.org
Milwaukee, WI (October 21, 2015) – Today the Milwaukee Charter School Advocates (the Advocates) questioned the purpose of a report issued by the Center for Media and Democracy, “Charter School Black Hole.”
According to the Advocates, the report aims to discredit the charter school movement by claiming that there is a widespread lack of financial accountability in the charter movement. However, independent charter schools in Wisconsin, which are public schools, must report the same financial information as districts report directly to the Department of Public Instruction.
No independent charter schools were listed in the report. Whereas, the Wisconsin schools highlighted in the report were all instrumentalities of their local school districts.
“This report actually makes a case for better authorizing and more independence. All of the Wisconsin schools criticized in the report were chartered by their districts, as opposed to being chartered by an independent authority,” said Sean Roberts, Executive Director of the Advocates.
“The report was issued as a so-called ‘guide for the media’ but I think members of the media are astute enough to see this as an attempt to disparage one form of a public school over another,” said Roberts. “We represent independent charter schools and these types of schools are accountable to their authorizers, the public and their school communities.”
Based on state tests scores, independent charters in Milwaukee are the top-performing public school option for families.
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About the Advocates: The mission of the Advocates is to provide strategies and resources to expand and replicate high-performing independent charter schools in Milwaukee, and to overcome or curtail the obstacles that inhibit their growth. www.milwaukeecharteradvocates.org
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