'Pulling a Fast One' by Cheryl Gibbs Binkley

Governor Youngkin’s “College Partnership Lab Schools"

When incoming Gov. Glenn Youngkin came into office in January of 2022, he came in promising “school choice,” as part of his parent power agenda. The leader of the National Association of Charter Schools was there for his early celebratory events, and traditional charter school advocates were ecstatic that Virginia, which had long been known for its excellent public schools would at last be opened to the charter school industry.

In order to open the market and gain enough traction in his one term, the former hedge fund manager would have to work fast. So Youngkin looked north to DC, and the G street consultants who had been part of earlier privatization efforts there and around the nation.

His Secretary of Education would be Aimee Guidera, a data collector whose firm, DQC, had been granted approximately $26 million over the years from the Gates Foundation to convince states and districts to collect complete and longitudinal data on students.

Across a similar time period, Andrew Rotherham AKA Eduwonk, was supporting Michelle Rhee’s candidacy for Chancellor of DC, and supporting the charters and firings of teachers of her era. " Like most reformers, I greatly admired Rhee’s tenure in D.C., in which she closed failing schools, fired underperforming teachers, and helped raise student achievement." he said.

He also defended her across the scandals that finally sent her to California. Rotherham was tapped to join the Virginia Board of Education as one of the replacement candidates for the 3 Northam appointees Gov. Youngkin refused to confirm.

" Like most reformers,
I greatly admired Rhee’s tenure in D.C.,
in which she closed failing schools,
fired underperforming teachers,
and helped raise student achievement."

Also, there was Bill Hansen, one of the “architects of George Bush’s No Child Left Behind who came as another of Youngkin’s VABOE appointments.

But there were a few problems, the first was Virginia schools were not in trouble as former takeover districts had been, but Youngkin was banking on the disaster capitalism of Covid to create the needed crisis.

Secondly, several ALEC model school bills died quickly in Virginia’s General Assembly, possibly due to a year of constant charter school scandals in the news.

But Gov. Youngkin’s team quickly rebounded with the idea of taking a mostly dormant type of school in VA - The College Partnership Lab Schools- and retooling them as the new name and “innovation” of his term. "we will invest $150 million to kick start 20 new charter schools in the Commonwealth." he declared.

Originally, College Lab Partnerships were designed as part of a teacher training model. Had Gov. Youngkin proposed keeping them for that purpose, he could have made progress on the teacher shortages which have been growing worse by the day. Instead he removed teacher training programs from the eligibility requirements.

Very quickly a bill was put forward by Del.Glenn Davis and a budget amendment which went from $300M behind the scenes to $150 million on paper. The 2022 biennium budget in the end would include $100M which must be returned to the general fund if not spent by June 30, 2024.

Secretary Guidera went into high gear, spreading a “Virginia’s schools are failing” story and reaching out to private Unis, Community Colleges, and traditional 4 year publics to convince them to accept a Lab School in partnership with a business. Nevermind that private universities and community colleges had not been part of the original definition of Lab Schools and were not, according to some legislators, part of the budget agreement.

By June the Virginia Code was morphing with a series of changes, in spite of no bills that had authorized the changes. Announcements and varied numbers of “approved” partnerships began to appear all across the state, and you had to read to the bottom and fine print to find out the partnering entity had not filled out paperwork when the announcement was published. The Youngkin administration made sure there was a publicity story released about this new innovative type of school roughly every month in national and regional outlets across the state.

By November though, only 3 grants had been approved. The long dormant Lab Schools Standing Committee that had not been reconstituted for 10 years became active with new appointees. Come December, with Elizabeth Schultz as staff, and Rotherham and Hensen as new standing committee members, they were quickly approving new applicants.

Just a couple of problems, the applications were for a preliminary planning grant that did not include the stringent application procedures of a full school approval, and most of the applicants were not proposing a full service school. They were coming with proposals for additional Dual Enrollment tuition support, Coding classes, or Amazon training, or Health sciences programs; the type of workforce programs that the Chamber of Commerce’s Go Virginia! Program had been requesting for several years, and that already existed at most Virginia high schools, unis, and community colleges.

“I don’t care whether you call them charter schools or lab schools,” Youngkin said, confirming that these are indeed charters meant to replace local governance with corporate management.

This year, again, the legislature refused to pass Del. Davis’ Lab School bill which was considerably more invasive on local school districts’ autonomy than last year’s.

Will the budget conferees yield to Youngkin’s request to grant another $50 million for workforce training that bleeds already existent career and technology programs in the public schools?

Will the Carlyle-style corporate takeover plan enable the school privatization sector to bring down one of the most preeminent public school systems in the country?

We wait to see.