Anthony Cody spent 24 years working in Oakland schools, 18 of them as a science teacher at a high needs middle school. He is National Board certified, and now leads workshops with teachers focused on Project Based Learning. With education at a crossroads, he invites you to join him in a dialogue on education reform and teaching for change and deep learning. For additional information on Cody's work, visit his Web site, Teachers Lead. Or follow him on Twitter.
The state legislature in Florida is preparing to vote on Senate Bill 6, which will remove incentives for teachers to achieve National Board certification, and according to the Florida Education Association,
• Require that all teachers be retained, certified and compensated based on student test scores on standardized tests -- not years of experience or degrees held.
Penalize school districts that even consider length of service or degrees held when determining compensation or reductions in force.
Order that teachers be issued probationary contracts for up to five years; then an annual contract every year after that ... eliminating due process.
Mandate more standardized testing for students (end of course exams for all subjects) and for teachers (additional certification requirements).
Exclude the salary schedule as a subject of collective bargaining. The state will decide what categories of differentiated pay will be provided for.
This may go farther than what Secretary Duncan had in mind when he issued the guidelines for Race to the Top, but thus far he has not commented on this proposal. Florida did not, however, make the final cut. The two states that won the "race" had a high degree of buy-in from their teacher unions.
The bill's sponsor, John Thrasher, wrote a letter to the editor yesterday defending the proposal. He writes:
Opponents say the current system for teacher evaluation is fine. Last year, 99.7 percent of teachers earned a "satisfactory" evaluation, yet 50 percent of our high school students, 35 percent of our middle school students and 30 percent of our elementary students didn't make a year's worth of progress in reading. That's fine?
Opponents would have you believe that the bill eliminates tenure for teachers . What it ends is the lifetime guarantee of employment after just three years in the classroom. This bill ties renewal to effective or highly effective performance, and requires a demonstration of student learning gains for at least four of the five previous years .
Since 30% to 50% of the students in Florida did not make a year's progress in Reading, I would infer that a similar proportion of the state's teachers will be deemed unsatisfactory and subject to reductions in pay, unsatisfactory evaluations and termination. No wonder they are getting active!
Florida teachers have been speaking out, and galvanizing parents as well. A visit to the Senate Majority Facebook page reveals many posts from those concerned about the proposals.
I have to wonder who they think is going to teach in these schools? Do they really believe that some sort of miracle workers are waiting in the wings to take over?
There are some weaknesses in our evaluation system, but this sort of heavy-handed approach is not going to fix them. Rather, it will polarize the situation, and reinforce the sort of oppositional behavior that destroys our ability to actually improve evaluation.
What do you think? Should we oppose proposals like Senate Bill 6? How would you like to be evaluated and compensated this way?
In the debate over education policy, there has recently developed a very cynical view of the purpose of tenure. In this view, tenure is used to protect "bad teachers," and is why our students would be better off without unions. If a school has poor test scores year after year, the theory goes, the teachers must be to blame, and should, at the very least, be required to prove themselves worthy by reapplying for the jobs they have been doing so poorly.
Tenure is actually not an accurate term for what we have in our schools. Due process would be a better term. What we actually have is simply a process that specifies how teachers can be terminated if they are "bad." But this process is now under attack, especially in schools in poor communities serving students with low test scores.
The story below comes from a teacher at Fremont High School, in Los Angeles. I have been carrying first-hand reports on the pending reconstitution of this school for several months. I invite you to read and think hard about what is happening to our colleagues there. Then join me in discussion below.
Terra's Story
Here's how I resigned. I was never too worried about getting another job because of my credential, all my good evaluations, and my reputation.
I am a special education teacher, a Probationary One teacher because I have my credential, but I've had it for just under one year. I've actually been working at Fremont High School for nearly three years as a Special Day Class teacher, primarily for Social Studies (U.S. History, World History, Economics/Government). This year, I added CAHSEE Prep and Reading Development classes to my schedule for preps. I started teaching on a University Intern Credential through the Teach for America program.
When the Superintendent made a surprise announcement about all of us being "fired, but welcome to reapply for our jobs," I thought to myself, wow, this man doesn't have many people skills. However, I thought maybe it'd be a good process and a good plan for the school. There are, after all, several awful teachers I know about at the school. Little did I know, LAUSD doesn't know much about good process or good plans....
The opaque presentations from administrators to faculty proceeded throughout January and February. We never learned much about how the school might be restructured and how the hiring/not hiring process would work. One day, I met with my supervisor, the AP over Special Education, and we discussed what he thought the school should improve over the next year. He told me he had no idea whatsoever about the changes being decided. Five minutes after I left the meeting, my friend sent me a text explaining that a Powerpoint about the New Fremont H.S. was available to the public in English through LAUSD's website. I walked up to my AP and mentioned it. He wouldn't look me in the eye.
From that moment, I learned that all research pointed to the destructive and failed propositions in that Powerpoint: 4 by 4 scheduling with almost zero time to plan, erasure of current Small Learning Communities with almost no planning or resources to support the beginning of new ones, no involvement of the school's community in the planning, and absolutely no indication that this plan would address any of the important needs that teachers and staff have in order to improve in their work and improve the school for students to better succeed. Lastly, the school will undergo two enormous shifts as the new high schools open over the next 2-4 years. The District will never know if their "reconstitution" succeeds or fails. Thus, the District does not care to know whether this plan succeeds or fails.
I noticed since the beginning of January that my many supervisors were deliberately not answering questions, lying directly about what they knew, and creating a fearful environment. In our faculty meetings and staff meetings, the principal would say that there would be little chance of acquiring a job elsewhere. He said that non-permanent teachers would have a "RIF-proof fence" and would only be safe at Fremont H.S. My AP and Principal specifically stopped me and told me those things, too. The AP told me on many occasions that I would definitely be rehired if I chose to reapply.
At this point, I had basically decided that it would be unethical for me to participate in the destruction of the successful programs at the school as well as the community disenfranchisement. [Later, I realized the negative impact that union-busting would have on our students.] Around this time, I found that my UTLA representative had misinformed me. He'd told me I was permanent, and I found out that I was not. I had been vocal about my opposition after he'd told me I was protected by the contract. I was appalled to find that I still was not protected by the teacher's union contract, and I wouldn't be for over another year! My principal basically wouldn't have to give any reason for "non-electing" me at the end of this school year. I didn't know what to do -- could I do what I felt was morally right and still take care of my career? It seemed perhaps I couldn't. I considered reapplication so as not to risk getting "non-elected" and ruining my
career (so other teachers told me) by opposing the new plan. I was told that even if the Principal signed my transfer papers, he could still non-elect me before I transferred, if he felt like it. I had grown to distrust him by this time anyway...
I was helping a group of permanent teachers and others to fight the reconstitution. I thought I could step back in the shadows and help without really being seen by my supervisors. Other teachers I respected told me I could do this, and it was partially for their sakes that I wanted to help fight against the reconstitution.
It all came to a head one Friday morning. We had called a press conference, and we had many journalists show up to listen to our protest of the reconstitution. I went to check on it and was asked by the other teachers/students/alums/staff to stay. Then, I was pushed to the front of our group. Then, I was pushed before cameras and asked to speak and represent our group. It became apparent that one of the most important roles the rest of my resistance group needed me to play was a public role, speaking for them sometimes. Uh oh.
I ran back to class, and during my breaks I made long phone calls to UTLA and to the California Commission on Teacher Credentials. I found out from the union that the latest news on non-permanent teachers at Fremont H.S. was that they would have to reapply or be automatically non-elected. "Those pieces of #$%^ didn't even tell us," I thought about my supervisors. I checked with him about resigning from the District, if that would help me avoid that situation. He said it would. I checked with the CCTC about making sure I could still file for my clear credential in a year if I resigned after this year. She told me I basically could still do it. I sent in my resignation by fax that afternoon. It is effective at the end of the day, June 30th.
-Terra Bennet
What do you think of Terra's story? Is this fair? Should teachers be protected from arbitrary firings by due process?
In response to my colleague Anthony Mullens' recollection of his classmate's shenanigans at the back of the classroom in New York City, I bring forth from the annals of history a tale from my own family's past.
Born in 1916, my father grew up in a coal hollow near Scott's Run, West Virginia. West Virginia is a rugged state, where the Appalachian mountains run north to south as a sort of spine. The rest of the state is like a sheet of paper that has been crumpled then flattened out, creating a sort of patchwork washboard of valleys and hills. Each valley is its own little community, and these are called "hollers." I grew up in California in the 1960s and 70s, but my father would occasionally share stories with us from the olden days of his youth. This story is mostly his voice.
The 1920s was a boom time for the US economy, and in Scott's Run it was all about the coal. New rail lines allowed coal to be profitably mined, and Scott's Run, northwest of Morgantown, became a bit of a boom town. My grandfather tried various means to make a living. He tried to scrape coal out of a small mine himself, but had trouble getting the heavy stuff to market. He got some land on a hillside some distance from their home, and planted corn and fruit trees - but at night the miners would come by and raid it, so he had to go out a stand guard with a shotgun. So one summer my grandmother traveled to the city to attend a school to get trained to be a teacher in the hopes that this might raise the family's fortunes. No bachelor's degree was required in 1925.
Children in this holler attended Stony Point School, a one room schoolhouse that educated about twenty students, ranging from 5 to 16 years of age, when the law allowed them to drop out. My father, Fred Cody, attended this school along with his younger brother Mart and his older brother John.
Around the year 1925, when my father was 9 years old, the school ran into a bit of trouble. The first teacher my father recalled was Mr. Pritchard, who let the older boys take control. The kids were more than rambunctious. The school was heated by means of a pot-bellied wood stove, and part of the school teacher's duty was to arrive early on frosty mornings to build the fire. He would fetch the wood from the shed, but one morning some of the boys snuck along and locked him inside. The sun rose high in the sky, and nobody let him out, until a farmer passing by heard him bellowing from within.
He was fired and replaced by a woman, who also was unsatisfactory. The parents then got together and decided that the next teacher needed to bring some order to this mess. They approached my grandmother, Mrs. Martha Cody, and asked if she would take on the challenge. She agreed, but she knew where the trouble lay. She set as her condition that if the students misbehaved, she would have the authority to send them home, only to return with a parent. The older boys who were the biggest source of trouble soon tired of this and retired from secondary education.
Nonetheless, there remained a few holdouts, including a young woman 16 or 17 years of age, named Bella, who was less than an academic star. One day my grandmother gave a writing assignment - and this being before the days of the Writing Project, she told the students to write a story at least 500 words in length. When she got Bella's paper, she discovered an epic tale. "There was a dog who chased a fox," she wrote. "And he ran and he ran and he ran and he ran and he ran and he ran and he ran...." And so on, for three full pages. Talk about a run-on sentence!
One day, as my father told it, Bella excused herself for the purpose of visiting the outhouse. A young man named Evans shortly thereafter requested a visit to the outhouse as well. The rule was that only one person was supposed to go to the outhouse at once. But on this day, Mrs. Cody was preoccupied teaching all the levels in her room, and did not notice their collective absence until half an hour had passed. She went to investigate, and discovered that Evans was in the girl's outhouse, presumably doing what comes naturally. Evans was sent home, not to return. Bella was also told to go home, to return the next day with her parents. But Bella would not leave. She returned to her seat, red of face and defiant. Mrs. Cody accepted the challenge, and as red of face as Bella, stepped over to confront the young woman. "Bella, I told you to go home." Bella stared back, and said decisively "I ain't a'goin'!" Whereupon my grandmother drew back her open hand and slapped the girl squarely across the face. "Now you get up and get your things and go home!" Bella, her shoulders shaking, with a mixture of indignation and shame, got up, gathered her belongings and left, never to return. That was the way the new school marm imparted the word that the new order had arrived at Stony Point.
I imagine this story reverberated down to me because of the impact it must have had on my father, who witnessed his mother confront the defiant student and emerge victorious. I would never strike a child, but in the circumstances, I understand why my grandmother made that choice. Her authority came from the agreement she had reached with parents, that uncooperative students would be dealt with by their parents. When a student refused to leave, she had no principal where she could send a student, no school security officers to call to remove her, so she did not have many options.
Though times have changed, teachers still need a sense of authority. That authority comes in part from our agreements with our parents, in part from the ability of the school to back the teacher up - to receive the student at the office, to give detention or other consequences. But the real moral authority of the teacher lies in the identification of the teacher with the interests of the students in the class. That means we try to base every decision we make in what is best for that individual student, balanced with the interests of the class as a whole. Our management and discipline works best when we can make that foundation clear, so actions are not about a struggle for power or ego, but are over the need to create a productive learning environment for all the students in the class. Sometimes we have to make tough choices, and our options can be limited.
I had a challenging experience a few years ago was when I was struck in the head by a small object thrown from across the room. I figured out who had thrown it, and sent him to the office on referral. When I followed up, I learned the administration had not taken it seriously, and later that day I got a note from the student asserting his innocence. I investigated with his classmates and got several of them to write short statements confirming that he was to blame, and gave those to the administration. But because it was the week of standardized testing, the administration decided he could not be suspended. So instead, he spent the period when he should have been in my class in the office for a few days and then returned.
I did not want to slap this student, but I was upset that his actions did not warrant a more serious consequence. And after that I felt less safe, and that my authority had been undermined. Teachers do not need to be able to slap their students, but they do need some backup when their authority in the classroom is challenged.
What do you think? Has your authority ever been challenged in class? How did you handle it?
(The image is a Cody family photo. My father is the boy on the far left. His mother is the woman second from the right in the back row.)
Students of history may recall that the phrase "Rain follows the plow" guided settlers in the 1870s to homestead and sow crops in vast stretches of arid plains in the American mid-west. According to this theory, the cultivation of the soil would result in greater humidity and rainfall, so that as the population increased, so would the harvest. An unusually damp decade supported this belief, but after years of persistent drought it was discredited.
We are seeing similar magical thinking afflicting the confluence of education and economics, in the belief that if we manage to prepare all our students for college, somehow the colleges will expand their capacity to educate them, and the future job market will absorb and reward them.
Let me say preemptively that I strongly believe all students deserve the very best education possible, and most students would benefit from attending college, assuming they do not need to acquire massive debt in the process. I also believe our current K-12 system is hugely inequitable, and that is not fair and should be corrected.
That said, the need to prepare all students for college is now being used as the reason we must close down, restructure or reconstitute "failing" schools - those with high numbers of drop-outs and low test scores. I do not wish to say these outcomes are acceptable, but I think the bigger question is how can we create an economy that has real opportunities for all of our students once they graduate? In the absence of these opportunities, I have to wonder whether the commitment to prepare all of our students for college is a sincere or wise one, and if it will, in fact, lead to better and more equitable outcomes.
I have, in the past, raised the rather obvious question about this goal: We have a great many college graduates on the unemployment rolls. It costs families, students and society a great deal to acquire this education. What makes us think there will be good jobs for an even larger number of college graduates, assuming our massive school improvement scheme works?
A nationwide postsecondary-ed prep initiative would truly pay off in a generation. If America is going to remain a global leader, it needs to open up new sectors of white-collar (or green-collar) jobs. We need to grow the work force and grow the pool of qualified people to accommodate that growth. Is America really tapped out of good jobs--- no more need apply?
I hate to say it, but I think that if we do not drastically shift our priorities, America is indeed tapped out, and no amount of homegrown college graduates will rescue us.
This takes us into the rather touchy territory of macroeconomics, but I am reminded of yet another period of American history, the economic boom that followed World War Two. We recall with fondness the expansion of the middle class that is credited to the GI Bill, the last great expansion of American college attendance. But the foundation for the post-war boom in our economy was the dramatic expansion of manufacturing, made possible by the devastation of our global rivals in the war. And the strength of labor unions meant that a much larger share of the profits from this expansion were returned to the growing middle class. I believe nostalgia for this era fuels the belief that if we simply graduate more students from college, the middle class jobs and rising income will follow.
Today we have a vastly different economic scene. We have a tremendous concentration of wealth, and a shifting of the tax burden from those with lots of money to the middle class. In the US, the latest data (from the Economist magazine) on the economic recovery indicates that while national income has increased by $200 billion in the past year, corporate profits have increased by $280 billion, while wages are down by $90 billion. We have an exportation of every job that can be done elsewhere for less, and that includes many jobs that used to be middle class. We also have the capacity to import cheap college graduates from abroad, as employers have shown every willingness to do. We have resources being shifted away from the public sector so that the very existence of public education is threatened.
And since our students are often more aware of these realities than our policymakers, teacher exhortations and expectations are likely to prove less and less effective as motivational tools. It is heaping insult onto injury to close down the schools and fire the teachers when their students fail to seize opportunities that are illusory.
There is some hope in the areas of the economy that Dan Brown mentions. If we are smart and get ahead of the curve on green technology, we could expand opportunities there. But growing the highly educated workforce in the hopes that jobs will arise is rather like planting crops in the belief that rain will come. If we do not consciously choose economic policies that strengthen our middle class, support job growth, and provide adequate resources for public education, then all the talk about preparing everyone for college is just going to lead to an educational dustbowl of massive proportions.
What do you think of asking schools to prepare all students for college?
This is part four of a debate between myself and a colleague who believes I have been too critical of charter schools. In Part One, he shared his perspective on the value of charter schools. I responded with my own views on the limitations of charters as a force for reform, and this week he offered his rebuttal to that. Here is my response to that one, Part Four of the great charter debate.
I appreciate you beginning with where we can agree. So I will start by stating that I agree that there are indeed charter schools doing good work. I have visited charter schools, and know that some of them are working well to engage their students in learning, and using innovative strategies like Project-Based Learning.
I am also glad you agree that it is a problem when authorizers of charters allow anyone to apply, tack up their shingle and declare themselves a school. If we can agree on this, I actually think most of our argument vanishes. Because the main reason I am raising concerns about charters is the apparent determination of the Duncan administration to remove all barriers to the expansion of charter schools. This was one of the primary determinants of who would receive Race to the Top grants, and states which have what seem to be entirely reasonable restrictions on the expansion of charter schools lost out when finalists were named in this competition. So I am glad you agree that we should be cautious in expanding charter schools.
Researchers at CREDO have suggested that it may be that charters in New York are better than elsewhere - perhaps because of the more stringent requirements imposed on them there.
The real problem with our debate is that it has been poisoned by the starvation of public schools, and the idea that public schools in general are failing and must make room for the superior charter schools. That forces those of us who work in public schools into a place of being a bit defensive when we are criticized and compared negatively to charter schools that are supposedly proving us to be ineffective. We have to scrutinize these comparisons closely, because they are not always fair. And the stakes are very high, because our entire public education system is in jeopardy.
So let's look at the evidence. You claim that Hoxby's work asserting the success of New York charters is solid. I am not so sure. The most significant argument against Hoxby's research that I have seen is that she has not controlled for classroom peer effects.
...it's not clear that Hoxby's methodology takes into account peer effects -- the straightforward concept that students not only learn from their teachers but are also influenced by their peers. Charter schools benefit from the fact that 100 percent of their students hail from motivated families; as a result, a charter student is surrounded by peers who are there by choice -- rather than by attendance zone. In contrast, the "lotteried-out" students may not benefit from such an intensive peer effect.
This adds up to a real advantage over traditional schools. It is absolutely an advantage to be able to require parents to sign a pledge stating they will do specific things to partner with the school, and to require that they show up for detention on a Saturday if their child is persistently tardy. Regular public schools cannot set such requirements and must take all comers. Some schools in Oakland have large numbers of students who are living in foster homes or group homes. These students will not be likely to apply for a charter, or to have parents available to sign such pledges. And I can tell you that these students offer significant academic and behavior challenges.
This is not just a "belief." I have 18 years of experience in an Oakland middle school where I witnessed the problems we had with such students firsthand. And I have seen students arrive to register at my regular public school after they were unable to handle the rules and rigor of a KIPP-style charter, and were asked to leave. The public schools cannot turn away anyone, unless that student is a violent threat to others - and even then there must be hearings, and students are often transferred from one school to another within the District.
That doesn't mean the charters do not take on some challenging students. And I am sure some charters are much more open to all comers than are others. But nonetheless, this difference makes it difficult to make straight comparisons across the board.
Lower proportions of ELLs and special education students raise similar concerns about the fairness of comparing results given that these groups are likely to have lower test scores.
I agree with your philosophical statement that traditional schools and charters should learn from one another. As I said at the outset, I did not come to teaching thinking the public schools were great. I think there is a lot of room for improvement, and we need creative enterprises that push us to try new approaches. But it is tough to foster cooperation in an environment of competition, and that is what has been created. And if that competition is not judged fairly, and our schools continue to be starved for funding, we have some real concerns about the survival of public schools.
My main concern about charter schools remains the following:
Comparisons between schools are very tricky, and in spite of what I have seen of Hoxby's research, I am not convinced that the populations of students are entirely comparable. Even granting that some charters are highly effective (as are some traditional schools) the national data do not suggest that charters, on the whole are superior, and thus I do not believe they warrant the kind of large-scale expansion apparently envisioned by the Secretary Duncan.
What do you think? Are comparisons between charters and regular public schools fair? Do charters warrant the strong support they are getting from Race to the Top?
Over the past month I have carried several posts offering the perspective of a colleague involved in philanthropy who is seeking to improve schools. After posting his perspective, I offered my own, somewhat critical of the emphasis on charter schools in Obama's reform plans. Here is my colleague's rebuttal. Please join in the discussion below.
My colleague's rebuttal:
I think we have several areas of agreement. Not all charters are good and far too many are bad. This often has to do with bad charter authorizers who let anyone put up a shingle and call themselves a charter school, despite little evidence that they can be successful. Anyone who cares about the vitality of the charter movement, or schools in general, should want to fix or close these schools. If they can't be fixed, they should be closed. But, to be fair, we also have to fix or close the poorly performing traditional schools. What's good for the goose, is good for the gander.
As far as the studies you cite, I'll save others to debate which study is more accurate. But, I will say this. I think they are both accurate to some degree. The CREDO study is much more expansive and thus took data from across the country. I think it points out what anyone who really knows charters understands: there are a select number of really high-performing charter schools and there are a bunch of others, some marginally better or worse than their traditional counterparts and some far worse than traditional schools. As I've said repeatedly, I'm not in favor of charters, I'm in favor of high-quality schools, be they charter or traditional. As far as the Hoxby study, please note the fact that you felt compelled to note the "conservative Hoover Institute's Caroline Hoxby." Why no qualifier for the Stanford CREDO study? But, can you argue with Ms. Hoxby's methods or her findings? Tell me some flaws in her research methods, but let's not use labels to discredit her work. (By the way, I'm a card carrying Liberal Democrat, even though some assume I'm some type of capitalist pig out to destroy union jobs.) Ms. Hoxby pointed out specific problems with the CREDO study which appears to not use as reliable data as Hoxby's study. You can download a discussion of these issues here.
One of the reasons I think Caroline Hoxby's study found dramatically different results is the fact that she was only looking at New York City. New York State has generally strong charter school authorizers and there are many high-performing CMOs in New York City: KIPP, Achievement First, Uncommon Schools and several others. These schools are focused on the poorest neighborhoods in NYC and they are doing really well and they'd all be the first to admit that they are still not satisfied with their results yet. I've been to many of these schools and have been inspired, just as I've been inspired in high-performing traditional schools.
Anthony, now let's get to some of my biggest frustrations with charter critics. You "believe" that there are significant differences between the populations of many charter schools from the regular public schools with which they compete. Please tell me how you've come up with this belief. Because, other than some behavior rules on one charter school's website, I see no evidence to back up your beliefs. So, rather than consider that "some" charters might actually be doing things right, let's discount everything they might be doing and chalk it up to the fact that these kids are just better from the beginning. Come on. Trust me, those schools deal with the same kids as the neighborhood schools and Ms. Hoxby's study only took into account kids whose parents who applied to the lottery and won vs. those that applied and lost. So, if your theory holds true, those kids whose parents cared enough to get them into the lottery, should have done just as well, even if they didn't get a spot in the charter school, right? Unfortunately, the results of the study did not show that.
Now, we get to the most ridiculous of your arguments. UCLA's Civil Rights Project's report. So, let me give you one example. Charter X is founded on the belief that kids in a particular low-income community (or perhaps in several low-income communities) do not have access to high-quality schools. So, the founders open a school in a low-income community that happens to have a high population of Green people. In fact, over 95% of the community is Green. So, Charter X attracts all the kids from the neighborhood, but they're almost all Green. Perhaps Charter X is fantastic and all of the Green parents want their kids to go there, but they can only accept 300 kids so not all Green kids get in. So, this ridiculous report would say that, by offering a fantastic opportunity to go to Charter X, the Charter was segregating all Green kids in the school. Trust me, the Green parents are sick of their crappy schools and they're happy for the choice. They care much more about whether their kids can read, write, perform science experiments and have enriching arts classes than whether there are Purple and Blue kids in their classroom. Plus, to compare them to schools elsewhere in the state is ludicrous. I would love to see a rainbow of colors in every classroom, but that's not reality in traditional schools or charters.
To the degree that charters are not serving their share of ELLs or students with disabilities, they should change their recruiting practices to ensure they do. Harlem Success Academy (HSA) serves far more students with disabilities than the neighborhood traditional schools. But, I can't speak for what they do in Boston. After all, they like the Red Sox and they cannot be trusted! But seriously, let's not use one study of Boston to assume that charters everywhere have the same problems.
Anthony, I agree with you that desirable transformations should not be deemed impossible at regular public schools. In fact, I think this is what all charter proponents dream of...traditional schools taking on some of their practices to reform the entire system. The obstacles are indeed many, but the institution of public education, of which charters are a part, (lest we forget), is definitely worth fighting for.
One of the things I've been thinking seriously about is the need to tear down the walls between traditional and charter schools. How do we get beyond the accusations and myths from both sides and learn from each other? I think the only way to do this effectively is to get teams of charter and traditional teachers to work together on a common goal. Perhaps it could be some degree of sharing between schools on curriculum, classroom management, organization of the school day, etc. But, I'm convinced that we all have a lot to learn from high-quality schools and I'm thinking through some ideas of how to make that happen. It's much harder to discount someone if you haven't seen them face-to-face. I appreciate the debate and the sharing of ideas and want to reiterate that I'm in support of all high-quality schools (regardless of their wrapper) and hope to do more for all in the future.
I forgot to respond to one of your criticisms: the fact that HSA raises money from outside sources and has a heavy dose of investment industry professionals on its board. Unfortunately, under New York state law, every individual charter school must have its own board of directors. This is especially taxing for Charter Management Organizations (CMOs) and they'd much prefer to have one board for all of their schools, but this is not allowed.
Harlem Success Academy was founded by two investment professionals and they have brought along their friends and colleagues to serve on their boards. This is atypical even for most CMOs. However, they are forced to raise money for their schools because the state gives charters far less per pupil than traditional schools. In fact, the difference in funding can be dramatically lower for charters, especially for kids with special needs that the serve.
I've met the founders and they are incredibly passionate about their belief in equity in schools for low-income schoolchildren. They are also extremely focused on performance. So, we'd all prefer if charters weren't required to raise the difference
between what traditional schools get and what charters get for serving the same pupil.
Harlem Success Academy has stated that they will not raise more money per pupil than what a traditional school spends. They do have the flexibility to spend the money differently than a traditional school, but don't believe the myth that they are getting these fantastic results to do more money, because it's not true. They are getting it due to very committed teachers and principals, parents, longer school days, an innovative curriculum, etc. They are not a panacea, but one beacon of hope.
What do you think? Are charter schools a real beacon of hope?
If you are like me, your head must be reeling this week, as we hear in the same broadcast about the release of new "high standards" for reading and math, and also news of massive layoffs at schools, that will result in larger class sizes and fewer opportunities for our students. How can we make sense of this paradox, where teachers are expected to continually raise student achievement, while the material conditions that would support success are stripped away?
A recent report revealed that single African American women have a median net worth of just $5. You read that right. Half of this group owes so much that it almost completely outweighs what is owned by those with any assets at all. Single white women in the same age group have a median wealth of $42,600.
Cohabiting or married Black women have a median net worth of $31,500, while cohabiting or married white women have a median wealth of $167,500.
In light of all the rhetoric about the importance of education for people's future well-being, this raises some huge questions for me. Is it possible that people are poor not because of a lack of effort or education, but because our economic and social system has structural poverty embedded in it?
That does NOT mean education is worthless. Somebody with a college education has advantages that someone without such an education does not have. But that advantage seems far less accessible than it was just a generation ago.
I believe our students are keenly aware of the ravages of poverty and the shrinking opportunities available to them. This is not the fault of their schools, because every school I go into has college posters everywhere, and the teachers are like cheerleaders trying to encourage their students to stay motivated. But the students know.
At the March 4 rally two weeks ago in Oakland I stood with a thousand youth from local high schools as they joined in with a speaker who chanted, "They don't really care about us," repeating a phrase from this Michael Jackson song.
The song says:
Tell me what has become of my rights
Am I invisible because you ignore me?
Your proclamation promised me free liberty, now
I'm tired of bein' the victim of shame
They're throwing me in a class with a bad name
I can't believe this is the land from which I came
You know I do really hate to say it
The government don't wanna see
But if Roosevelt was livin'
He wouldn't let this be, no, no
This represents the world view of many of our students, especially African Americans and Latinos.
A couple of weeks ago I heard about a special court program being offered to returned combat veterans who have gotten into scrapes with the law. This court was set up with the understanding that the traumas of war can have a damaging effect on the psyche of the veterans, who return with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and sometimes engage in destructive behaviors as a result. The veterans are given treatment options focusing on their mental health, and encouraged to rehabilitate, in recognition of the fact that it was their service to our country that caused them to be damaged in this way. Buffalo, New York, has a similar program.
I am glad there is some recognition in these communities that the traumas of war can result in mental scars that are best healed by good counseling and support, rather than incarceration. But guess what? Children in many of our poor neighborhoods suffer from PTSD as well. In this little-noticed study from a few years ago, researchers discovered that
As many as one-third of children living in our country's violent urban neighborhoods have PTSD, according to recent research and the country's top child trauma experts - nearly twice the rate reported for troops returning from war zones in Iraq.
The researchers found that children with PTSD exhibit many behaviors familiar to urban educators. Experts say it often looks like Attention Deficit Disorder, with students being anxious, unable to concentrate well or sit still, prone to fights, and having trouble learning as a result.
This could be having a major impact on the achievement gap - but we don't see much research in this direction, nor the funding of programs to deal with this.
It also suggests that a huge number of the young men and women in prison today are there because, like the combat veterans, they were damaged by the traumas they endured in their neighborhoods.
Among 25 to 29 year-old African American males, more than one in ten are in prison. More African American men are in prison than are in college. As a society we are willing to pay $40,000 a year to incarcerate somebody, but in California we cannot afford even $7,000 a year to educate a child in the public schools.
Recent reports on the economy indicate that unemployment among African Americans of the age of our students' parents is likely to be over 40%, and child poverty among this group is likely to exceed 50%. As the stock market soars back to high levels, corporate profits climb, and we hear of a "jobless recovery," with even college graduates experiencing a high level of unemployment, more and more of us seem to be joining the expendable underclass.
This is a bit of a ramble, but where I am going is towards the understanding that we cannot satisfy ourselves with the modern version of Horatio Alger tales, the notion that hard work and determination will allow all our children to succeed.
We hear from Duncan and Obama that the schools and teachers are to blame when the children are not succeeding on their tests -- and the implication is that bad schools are in turn the reason they are (or will continue to be) poor. But what about the fact that these students do not see a connection between their education and a bright future?
And as every day goes by we hear of new cuts to our schools, larger class sizes, fewer counselors, nurses, libraries and other essential services. This week every single librarian in the Los Angeles Unified School District received a layoff notice. We see billions going to war, to prisons, to bank bailouts, but the schools face devastating cuts, class sizes swell, and college is priced out of reach. These students must believe their eyes. Their eyes do not deceive them. Our system does not really seem to care about them.
There are certainly many who do care, so I do not wish to seem unappreciative. In Oakland, local voters have repeatedly approved increased taxes to refurbish schools and support teachers. Many of our students have benefited when their teachers received grants for materials and field trips from Donor's Choose and other charitable organizations. But in spite of these efforts, our schools are in crisis, and it does not seem as if society at large is even aware.
Teachers are in the impossible position of being blamed when our students cannot see a path to success, after that path has been destroyed. And as the pink slips rain down in schools, and whole school faculties are fired and forced to reapply for their jobs, it appears they don't really care about us either.
What do you think? Can you reconcile the ever-rising bar for student achievement with the ever-declining resources for our schools?
Regular readers may recall that back in November I expressed my frustrations with the direction Obama and Duncan have taken in education through an open letter to the President. I also began a Facebook group, Teachers' Letters to Obama, and collected over 100 passionate and well-informed letters, which I sent to Obama and Duncan in December. One of those letters stuck with me. I wanted to share it with my readers, but the author asked me to wait -- he had some plans in the works. Those plans are now in place, so today I share with you this letter from Jesse Turner:
Walking is an old story for me. As a child my mother, sisters, and I spent a winter without gas heat, (Father walked out on us--we could not pay the gas bill before the winter legal shut off date). We had a little kerosene heater for our only source of heat in our apartment. It was the coldest winter of our lives. My mother was a waitress working 10 hours a day six days a week. There was never enough of anything.
I guess you might call us the original latch key kids of the 1960's. We stole electricity from a socket in the hallway. Only one appliance at a time could be put on, and only at night. We were afraid someone would find out what we were doing. Each evening as our mother climbed the three flights of stairs to our little apartment we were there at the door complaining, "we're cold, mom, and tired of sandwiches." We moaned and we moaned every night.
She would kick off her white shoes, take off the red apron, and sit
down, and say "how was school today?"
We would shut off the lamp, put on the candle, and turn on the electric kettle. We tell her school was warm. We tell her no one got in trouble. My sisters would say we went to the library. The library was warm, and the library ladies were nice. As soon as she took that first sip of tea almost on cue I would say, "I'm cold mom."
It never ceases to amaze me how she held it all in. Always a brave smiling face saying "well, then, let's all have some tea" to warm everyone up. We would sleep with blankets, coats and sweaters.
We woke up during each night with cold noses, and blew warm air into cupped hands to warm them. I love doing that to this very day on a cold day.
Mother came home from work one particularly bad snowy night to find us huddled together complaining about how cold it was in our little apartment. This night tea was not enough. So she says "let's walk around. Let's walk around the apartment. Let's start in the kitchen, and move from room to room. Let's keep walking. Don't stop! Keep walking now. Let's keep adding some more clothes. Put a pair of pants over your pajamas. Put an extra shirt on. Keep walking. Don't stop. Put on an extra sweater. Put your coats on. Keep walking -- don't stop."
"Hey little Jess, you look like you are sweating. You must be hot." "Oh yes, momma, I'm hot. Let's take off our coats."
All warm and cozy we sat down, and mom told us the story of the Hebrews, and how they walked for 40 years in the desert. We grew up watching Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, walk all over this nation of ours on television. I learned about the Cherokee Nation and their "Trail of Tears" in school. Years later on the Navajo nation I would learn about the Navajo "Long Walk" from my friend Tony Gatewood on the third mesa. I have no illusions about walking. I only know somehow it keeps us warm. It starts things moving, and it is so much better than standing still. Plus I have some other feet stepping beside me to help pull it off.
I figure we'll start walking this year, and maybe some others will join us next year, and maybe some more after that. I don't know where it will go, but I want to walk just the same.
This is not just about walking,
This is about feeling powerless,
This is about starting things moving,
This is about one trillion dollars not being spent on tutors to help teachers in their classrooms reach children who are falling behind,
This is about not hiring 100,000 new teachers to reduce class size,
This is about 94 dead teenagers in Chicago,
This is about one teenager set on fire by other teenagers in Florida,
This is about a young 15-year old California girl raped in public view after her homecoming dance,
This is about the 2009 US Justice department report showing over 60% of American children reporting they were exposed to violence last year, and no one questioning this,
This is about another White House looking at test scores rather than looking at the human faces behind their numbers.
This is about spending a trillion dollars on new tests; curriculum packages that come in boxes, and endless new standards that US Department of Education Impact study after Impact study show declines in comprehension and no effects.
This is about a new form of insanity, one that spends billions everywhere, except where it is needed most.
This is about another generation being left behind.
This is about Sarah's (one of our new inservice teachers) first grade reader reading at the third grade level having to sit through phonics lessons because he needs to learn to sit still, (when she knows it is because he does not fit in their little boxes).
I have no power. I have no army.
Like you Mr. President, I too have an audacity to hope and two feet willing to walk. I am one man, but I can be a witness. I can walk to DC, and tell parents, teachers, and children someone is listening. My name is Jesse Turner, and this summer I am walking to Washington DC to protest this misguided educational reform policy.
Last night I attended a presentation by Tim Daly of The New Teacher Project, one of the authors of a recent study, The Widget Effect, that has been hugely influential in education policy over the past six months. This study began with the widely accepted premise that the outcomes for children lucky enough to have a series of effective teachers and the unfortunate children who get a series of ineffective ones can be vastly different. In spite of this, the researchers found that school districts treat teachers as interchangeable widgets, in the ways that they are evaluated and developed.
The research on evaluation made this point dramatically. Our evaluation systems are not, on the whole, useful for much beyond identifying individual teachers who are grossly incompetent or derelict. The data they collected showed that the vast majority of teachers receive satisfactory or excellent evaluation ratings, and a tiny proportion are rated less than satisfactory. An even smaller number are terminated or "counseled out" of their positions.
The Widget Effect report concludes with four recommendations:
ADOPT a comprehensive performance evaluation system that fairly, accurately and credibly differentiates teachers based on their effectiveness in promoting student achievement and provides targeted professional development to help them improve.
TRAIN administrators and other evaluators in the teacher performance evaluation system and hold them accountable for using it fairly and effectively.
INTEGRATE the performance evaluation system with critical human capital policies and functions such as teacher assignment, professional development, compensation, retention and dismissal.
ADDRESS consistently ineffective teaching through dismissal policies that provide lower-stakes options for ineffective teachers to exit the district and a system of due process that is fair but efficient.
Some of these recommendations make a lot of sense. Ideally, teachers should be involved in observing one another and giving each other feedback. We should be sharing our student work, and getting ideas to improve instruction. A strong evaluation system would be informed by these processes, and would give teachers a chance to reflect on their growth, and target areas where they want to become stronger. Professional development would be connected to these individual goals, and teachers would take more responsibility for moving forward as professionals. Evaluation would not be a "gotcha" observation by an administrator, nor would it be an arbitrary judgment based solely on student test scores.
Unfortunately the media and policymakers have focused on only two aspects of this report and made illogical extrapolations. The fact that a great teacher makes a difference has been extended to the conclusion that if we had only great teachers, we could solve the persistent problems we have in our schools. And the corollary conclusion is clearly that the easiest way to get great teachers is by firing bad teachers. From the notorious Newsweek cover we get the message "We Must Fire Bad Teachers," and a portrait of a profession "insulated from accountability."
So now we have school reform by the method of the clean sweep, where whole school faculties are fired and forced to reapply for their jobs. One of the four pillars of Race to the Top, (and most likely soon the new Elementary and Secondary Education Act,) is to restructure "failing" schools.
School districts must agree to one of four turnaround models: closing the school and sending students to higher-achieving ones; turning it around by replacing the principal and most of the staff; "restarting" the school by turning it over to a charter- or education-management organization; or implementing a mandatory basket of strategies labeled "transformation.
There are a host of problems with this approach to improving schools.
First, as Secretary Duncan has himself stated (though strangely, he seems to only emphasize this when speaking to teachers) the means by which we measure student achievement are deeply flawed, and "so many schools get mislabeled," as a result. How can we justify such an intrusive reform regime when it is based on these flawed measurements?
Second, we have been down this road before, and it has not led us anywhere. In California the list was just released of the schools the state has identified as the "bottom 5%" targeted for restructuring. The five Oakland schools on the list are less than seven years old. Each of them was created when the school previously on that site was closed, in the previous round of restructuring forced by No Child Left Behind. They are all within a five mile radius, all in the impoverished African American and Latino immigrant community. I work with teachers at some of these schools, and they are highly dedicated, motivated professionals, who work long hours for their students. What makes policymakers think another round of disruptions is going to have different results?
Oakland, like many urban districts, has taken to filling vacancies with minimally trained interns. Three years after they begin, three fourths of these interns have left the District. So any teacher that we terminate is likely to be replaced by an intern, who is likely to leave within a few years. Does it make sense that we focus on turning over even more teachers?
And the whole disruption caused by restructuring may cause you to lose as many good and great teachers as bad ones, if the experience at Fremont High School in Los Angeles is any indication. The majority of teachers there have signed a pledge NOT to reapply for their jobs, in spite of their deep dedication to their school and their students. This restructuring is having some very negative effects.
What would the reforms look like if we turned these solutions on their head? It might make more sense to focus on how we might improve our evaluation systems to RETAIN and IMPROVE teachers, rather than to get rid of them. It is ironic that a reform movement based on the premise that every child can succeed has decided that though all children can learn, many of their teachers cannot.
What do you think of the emphasis on firing teachers to improve schools? Is there a better way?
From Washington comes word that this Friday afternoon Arne Duncan's Department of Education will unveil its "blueprint" for the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind, (which they have gone back to calling ESEA). This law has done more to damage public schools than anything else. This will be our chance to see if Duncan has actually listened to teachers as we have written and spoken to him about the many things wrong with federal policy.
Since this law must be reauthorized by Congress, this process will be our only chance of making changes to it. Over at Teachers' Letters to Obama we are sharing letters we are sending to Congress and Duncan. Last week I got the following letter from Herb Kohl, who gave me permission to post it here. With Secretary Duncan making the rounds declaring education to be the "civil rights issue" of our era, Herb raises some provocative questions.
Opportunity to Learn: Some suggestions for the reauthorization of ESEA
Herbert Kohl
During the last attempt to rework ESEA I worked with Senator Paul Wellstone on building Opportunity to Learn ideas into ESEA. Let me explain our thinking then, which I think might be useful as progressives consider what specific suggestions to make this time through.
When considering school failure, consideration must be given to the situation and circumstances under which children learn. Jonathan Kozol's Savage Inequalities dramatically documents the lack of opportunity presented to many poor children. Taking off from this, we raised the issue of how to negate those inequalities. The question that droves this analysis was: Do all children have the same opportunities to learn? We were careful to avoid the question of poverty, family background, etc., because we wanted to make strictly educational arguments. We wanted to focus specifically on the conditions of schooling and make the opportunity to learn an equity issue. In this context we wanted to create a series of measures of equity, amongst which were:
What are the facilities necessary to promote equitable learning?
What is an equitable ratio of students to teachers?
What is the range and scope of a learning program that promotes equitable learning - this would include the arts, opportunity for athletics and cultural learning, advanced placement courses, science labs?
What are the credentials teachers are expected to have to produce excellence in learning?
What kind of wages and conditions of work contribute to educational opportunity for children?
What kinds of supplies and equipment must all school have access to (text books, computers, etc.)?
What kind of facilities should house an equitable learning environment for all children?
What kind of standards and measures should be used to measure a school's effectiveness as an equitable learning institution?
What role should parents and community organizations play to ensure equitable schools in their communities?
There were other conditions, but the idea was to establish a base for what was equitable based upon an analysis of successful public schools across the nation. We did not want to tie this notion into variables that had to do with conditions outside of the context of schools, as we wanted educational solutions to educational problems. In other words, we wanted to assert that, when given the resources, schools across the country could deliver excellent equitable education. We were not advocating a single standard, so much as a series of base lines. Once agreements on what successful and effective total school environments are like (there, of course can be multiple models, a range of effectiveness, but there have to be minimums), the idea was to craft legislation that would fund school facilities improvement, special programs in the schools, school reorganization, heightened credentialing programs for teachers, etc. Instead of taking the punitive stance that did emerge from Congress and the Presidency with NCLB, the idea was to bring the schools up to standards as a means of bringing their students up to standards. The idea was not, however to brush away problems. Accountability had to be built in and communities that would not commit to equitable schools would not be given funding. All of this remained, of course, at the talking stage since only a small number of members of the Senate and House bought into it. Nevertheless these general ideas might help people who are trying to propose alternatives to the current punitive and coercive conditions s that are likely to be incorporated into ESEA this time through.
My feeling is that progressives should advocate a "race to equity" - a multibillion dollar initiative to bring some of the most impoverished schools up to the material and pedagogical conditions of the most effective public schools in the country.
What do you think of Herb Kohl's proposal? How should we address the issue of equity in public education?
When I first heard about Diane Ravitch a decade ago I did not like her much. After serving as Assistant Secretary of Education under George H. W. Bush, she became a vocal defender of No Child Left Behind during the presidency of George W. Bush. However, in recent months she has emerged as a powerful critic of the law and of the path being pursued by Arne Duncan and President Obama.
I had a chance to interview Dr. Ravitch this week, and I am happy to share her thoughts with you.
You have spoken recently about the threat to public education posed by current reform strategies. What do you fear?
I believe that the current focus on testing of basic skills, with high stakes attached to the results for teachers and schools, will lead to the neglect of everything else that is not tested. If a generation of American children are tested with intensity in basic skills, but do not have studies in science, history, geography, the arts, literature, geography, and civics, as young people will not be well educated. Even if test scores should rise, the students will be poorly educated. Of courses, everyone will blame the public schools, not the politicians who foisted this approach on educators.
Coupled with this risk of curriculum narrowing is the threat posed by continuing--and unleashed--privatization. With the Race to the Top dangling billions before states to persuade them to remove all limits on charter schools, we are likely to see more entrepreneurs move into the education industry. To assure their success, they will seek to skim the best students from the poorest communities. This is a threat to the future of public education, which will be seen in some communities as schools of last resort for those who could not make it into a charter school and those who were counseled out.
As someone who was once "inside" the administration, how would you suggest those of us concerned about this direction take action? What will it take to get them to recognize what you have?
Educators who see the handwriting on the wall must work through their organizations and urge them to make their collective voices heard. Alone, we are all powerless. Organized, we will be heard. All of the major organizations have D.C. offices. They need to contact their Senators and Congressmen and let them know what educators think.
Why do you think it is so hard for our leaders to understand that schools operate under a different set of guiding motivations and operating principles than do businesses?
Business and education operate by different principles. We have done a poor job of withstanding efforts to impose corporate and business methods on the schools. Of course, the schools have business functions which operate in the economic mainstream, say, capital budgets, construction, purchasing, etc. But there is a line that separates the classroom from the business office. This is because children are not products; they cannot be educated on an assembly line; they cannot be standardized. Each one has a different personality and different needs. What matters most for the teacher is the exercise of judgment in dealing with the distinctive individuals before him or her. Judgment cannot be reduced to a script or an industrial process.
How do you account for your epiphany around NCLB, and the apparent obtuseness of others?
My epiphany around NCLB occurred in November, 2006, when I went to a meeting at the American Enterprise Institute to hear a series of studies of how NCLB was working. AEI is a conservative think tank and I assumed the papers would be celebratory. They were not, and at the end of the day, I concluded (and said publicly) that NCLB was not working. That had a big impact. My guess is that most people just go along with the conventional wisdom; it takes a lot of time and energy to arrive at a divergent opinion. Critics of NCLB must be wiser in making their case and must be clear in explaining its baneful effects, its lack of success, and the ways in which it undermines education.
With the drive for national standards gaining steam, many of us are concerned that tests aligned to these standards could take us further down the path of test-centered educational reform. What do you think of this concern?
I think it is a reasonable concern. I have never been a foe of testing, and I am not now. There are good tests and bad tests. More important, though, is the use and misuse of testing. If tests are used for diagnostic and informational purposes, they are helpful and useful. If they are used to punish students, teachers, and schools, they are harmful. If somehow it were possible to make all state and national tests low-stakes or no-stakes (like NAEP), then I don't think they would be a problem for teachers.
What do you think the role of charter schools should be in our systems?
Charter schools should be supportive of public schools, not competitive. They should fulfill the original vision for them as R&D schools, where public school teachers have the chance to try out new ideas to help the kids who are most challenging to educate. Whatever they learn about helping kids who are hard to motivate, kids with language issues, etc., would be shared with the public schools. That was the original vision. Unfortunately in some cities, the charter sector is in entrepreneurial hands and wants to replace public schools.
If you could make one change to NCLB in the reauthorization process, what would it be?
Eliminate federal prescriptions for federal sanctions and remedies. None has any basis in research or demonstration. Congress lacks the wisdom, knowledge, or experience to reform the nation's schools. The specifics of reform should reside at the state and local level, where there are people on the ground who know the problems and needs of local schools. The federal government is too far away to declare what needs to be done in schools across the nation.
A week ago I gave most of my blog over to a colleague who works in the field of education philanthropy, in order to share his views on charter schools.
The gist of his message was this: When high-performing charter schools are allowed to get enough market share to truly challenge the status quo, they are forcing the public schools to compete. He suggested that several obstacles to the expansion of charter schools be removed - that they be given the same per pupil funds as public schools, and be given access to public school buildings.
Here are my thoughts.
First of all, I am all in favor of giving educators room to experiment with the way schools are organized and focused. I attended Berkeley High School back in the mid-1970s, in the waning years of the alternative schools movement, and I appreciated leaders like Herb Kohl who created energetic schools with classes that spoke to me as a student. I do not believe all schools should look the same, nor should student performance always look the same.
So I am at a disadvantage when it comes to using the results of the major studies that have been done on charter schools, such as the CREDO study from Stanford, or the study authored by the conservative Hoover Institute's Carolyn Hoxby. The CREDO study found that quality was highly variable among charter schools, and that on the whole, they did not perform significantly better than public schools. Hoxby, on the other hand, has found that students at charter schools had better performance. Both sets of studies use standardized test scores as the indicator of quality, which I find somewhat problematic.
The sad truth is that since No Child Left Behind has defined student achievement narrowly as math and reading test scores, this is the primary data available to compare schools. I am not satisfied with this, but we do not have any other basis on which to make this comparison.
The most important claim of charter school advocates is that these schools can beat the public schools when it comes to closing the achievement gap.
But are the students at charter schools the same population as those at regular public schools? Or are they "better" somehow, in a way that makes them easier to teach?
My belief is that there are significant differences between the population at many charter schools, and those at the regular public schools against which they compete. If this is the case, then we don't have a level playing field, and the competition cannot be fairly judged. In the case of the Harlem Success Academy cited by my colleague, students are chosen by a lottery, but parents must apply, and sign a pledge to take an active role in their child's education. Furthermore, if the child is tardy, the parent must show up with the child for Saturday school. These are likely to be effective devices to promote good behavior, but as commenter jlucido pointed out last week, they are going to exclude many of the students that a public school can NOT exclude. We cannot kick out a student because they do not have a parent willing to take this kind of responsibility, and we have many students living in foster homes, group homes, or with relatives rather than stable households. So the mere existence of a lottery is insufficient to make these student populations comparable.
I am not alone in saying that these populations are not the same.
This analysis of recent data finds that charter schools are more racially isolated than traditional public schools in virtually every state and large metropolitan area in the nation. While there are examples of charter schools with vibrant diversity, this report shows these schools to be the exception. Further, extensive studies exploring charter school benefits reveal no net academic gains for students as indicated by test scores.
They also reported that:
Charter schools continue to be associated with increased levels of racial isolation for their students, either in terms of minority segregated schools or white segregated learning environments. Studies suggest that sorting students by socioeconomic status is linked to charters, as well as a propensity for charter schools to serve lower numbers of ELLs and students with disabilities.
This corresponds with data that emerged last fall from Boston, which revealed that charter schools there had far fewer English Language Learners, Special education and poor students than the public schools.
As my colleague, Nancy Flanagan points out, charter schools have some other advantages as well. A largely younger cadre of teachers who cost less and can be pressed into working long hours at little expense. And some, like the Harlem Success Academy, have boards of directors with wealthy individuals and corporate sponsors capable of raising millions of dollars.
Arne Duncan and Barack Obama have made the expansion of charter schools one of the four pillars of Race to the Top, and are requiring states to eliminate regulations that hamper the expansion of charters as a condition of qualifying for new funding. This just does not make sense. As Thomas Toch has convincingly argued, there are big obstacles to scaling up, that go far beyond the issues of funding and the sharing of public school buildings mentioned by my colleague. Toch wrote:
Charter schools are an important addition to the public education landscape and the best CMOs (Charter Management Organizations) have produced great results. ... But the CMO movement has created only a few hundred schools in a decade, and even with more funding it would be difficult for CMOs to expand much faster without compromising the quality of their schools.
I have never been opposed to charter schools on principle. I think there should be avenues for teachers and parents in a community to initiate a new school with their own vision for their students.
We should be open to fresh ideas, and the public schools definitely need them. There are some charter schools doing great things - giving teachers more time to plan and collaborate, choosing school-wide themes for learning, or implementing powerful strategies like Project-Based Learning.
But I have trouble understanding why we should decide that the desirable transformations carried out by the best charters are so impossible in the regular public schools, where 97% of our students are still being educated. There are obstacles here, but they can be overcome, and I believe the institution of public education is worth fighting for.
The greatest advantage many charter proponents seem to focus on is the absence of unions to muck things up and prevent the firing of crummy teachers. I think there are much better ways to solve this problem - but that is a subject for another day.
What do you think? Are the comparisons of charter schools to public schools fair? Does it make sense to expand charter schools to create more competition?
In the past month we have heard a great deal about Central Falls High School in Rhode Island, where the school board voted to fire the entire staff because the school was not raising test scores fast enough. This has focused attention on the challenge of struggling schools. Everyone agrees that change is needed in these schools, but is it really necessary to fire the staff?
One thing that became clear after the initial flood of publicity is that these situations are more complex than the soundbites we get from the media and the politicians. Every school has its own history, and if we want to improve a school we need to start by working with what is there, and develop the leadership capacity needed to drive improvement.
Over the past month I have shared news from a less famous but equally instructive school reconstitution process taking place - Fremont High School in Los Angeles. We are hearing firsthand from teachers about their experience - what it feels like to be told that you are to blame for your students' low performance, and that you must reapply for your job.
Today I am sharing a message from a different voice, from Scott Banks, a teacher who used to teach at Fremont, but left to teach at a school where the students come from wealthier families. His comments reveal some very important subtexts to the reconstitution dilemma. Can we get beyond the soundbites and get a deeper understanding of what is happening in these schools? I think this open letter to Los Angeles Schools Superintendent Ramon Cortines might help.
Dear Dr. Cortines,
You have decided to make Fremont teachers reapply for their own jobs as part of a "reconstitution," implicitly blaming them for the shortcomings of their school. You have also opened the hiring at Fremont to other aspirants.
I am a teacher at Marshall High. I helped our Academic Decathlon team gain top scores in Art for several years, including a second place finish. Several dozen of my English students have succeeded at the challenging AP Literature test. Virtually all of my students pass the English CAHSEE, including many special education students. I have helped my school meet its AYP/API targets with some consistency.
If you are looking for teachers to spearhead success at Fremont, perhaps my record would recommend me as a promising candidate.
If so, you may be curious to learn why I am not still teaching at Fremont. You see, I taught at Fremont for five years before choosing to leave for Marshall.
I left some time after Fremont was assigned a principal unequal to the task of governing it. When we teachers requested an effective leader, our demands ignited an ugly fight that lead to many months of chaos. I wound up a victim of stress and disillusionment. I left the school over ten years ago when I became convinced that LAUSD either couldn't or wouldn't govern it effectively, and when the anxiety of the fight began to damage my home life.
My experience might be instructive for your efforts.
In the first place, it would seem to show that the shortcomings at Fremont cannot be laid at the door of its teachers. If you judge Fremont's current teachers a failure on the basis of their students' test scores, then by the same criteria I was a failing teacher when I left Fremont. Yet when I transferred to Marshall, my new students attained much better test scores. If you imagine this was due to some personal transformation of my teaching, I invite you to transfer me to a high school whose students have a higher average socio-economic status than Marshall, where I suspect yet another personal renaissance awaits me.
Secondly, my experience might lead you to wonder how Fremont loses so many excellent teachers and potentially excellent new teachers each year, and whether administrative efforts to retain these teachers might be more productive than your current attempt to drive teachers away.
If you are inclined to pursue this possibility, my experience suggests that you are uniquely placed to get results. One thing alone would have sufficed to keep me at Fremont: effective leadership. Consistently excellent leadership would retain many more fine teachers at Fremont. The high turnover of principals at Fremont over the last two decades indicates that LAUSD has failed to lead Fremont effectively in the time since I left. It is your responsibility, not that of teachers, to make sure that Fremont never again lacks for sustained excellent leadership.
Finally, if you follow through with your plan to interview current teachers for their own jobs, you might ask yourself what kind of teacher would both volunteer to teach at Fremont in the first place and also remain there for years. I am a creative, intelligent and capable teacher. I was deeply dedicated to Fremont, and especially to its students. I have deep and fond memories of these students to this day. These traits were not enough for long-term success in the environment LAUSD created at Fremont.
It humbles me to consider what personal qualities I would have needed to have remained. I hope you can summon that same sense of humility as you interview veteran Fremont teachers. Perhaps some of these teachers just feel stuck at Fremont. But you need to know that many more of these veteran teachers have special qualities that keep them at Fremont, and that most new teachers will inevitably turn out to lack such qualities. I wonder if you truly have any idea of what a Fremont teacher needs to succeed in the long term.
I understand that over half of the Fremont teachers have decided to leave rather than interview for their jobs. They are clearly upset at being blamed. If you do not reverse course and regain the trust of these teachers, you will do grievous harm to the institution you are trying to help.
You need the best teachers at Fremont. Who else has demonstrated that they can do the job they do?
Best regards,
Scott Banks
What do you think we can learn from this letter? How might districts better approach the improvement of struggling schools?
I am just home from a day of participating in Oakland protests against cuts to our schools. I began the morning standing on a corner a few miles from my home with former colleagues from Bret Harte Middle School, where I taught for 18 years. We held up signs and waved as motorists honked as they passed by.
Then I visited a local elementary school, Redwood Heights, where I videotaped the students and teachers as they chanted and the school band played.
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I stopped by Laney Community College, where I went to school in the early 1980's. Several hundred students gathered for a rally in the main plaza. Those students marched downtown, where they joined high school students from Oakland, Berkeley and Alameda. The cosmetology students from Laney looked especially sharp, and chanted their slogan, "Cut Hair, Not Budgets!"
Much of the current "reform movement" as defined by Obama and Duncan pits students against teachers by accusing teachers of being the reason students do not succeed. While these students know that some teachers are more concerned and effective than others, they were clearly in support of their teachers, and committed to solidarity with us. Many carried signs, such as "Teachers need Love," and "We support Our Teachers." Oakland Education Association President Betty Olson-Jones addressed the crowd and built on this spirit of unity in the face of adversity.
A couple of hours later, students who marched from UC Berkeley four miles away arrived, and the crowd swelled to several thousand. The rally was very democratic, with numerous speakers from the local high schools and colleges, political organizations, labor unions, and teachers. The group heard from students visiting from Japan, who shared their common struggle against the privatization of education there.
Many speakers connected the cuts in education to the continued expansion of funding for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the ever growing budget for prisons in our state. This connection was made very real when a student from Merritt College shared how she had entered college after several scrapes with the law, and was determined to pursue a brighter future through her education. See the video below for a bit of inspiration.
This student rap group got the crowd moving with a clear statement about the importance of education.
The organizers of the rally expressed determination that this is just the beginning of their efforts. One speaker pointed out that many of our students gained opportunities to enter higher education for the first time in the 1960s after massive protests shook the system. Now those opportunities are being removed, and we must take similar actions to bring these opportunities back.
My day of protest ended at the state office building, where elected officials and labor leaders addressed a crowd of about a hundred teachers. School district administrators had made agreements with the teacher union to allow students and teachers to participate in protests. Schools held "disaster drills" at 9 am to raise awareness of the budget catastrophe we face.
I found it inspiring to hear students express such determination to protect their access to education. Speaker after speaker spoke of their appreciation for their teachers, and their dedication to learning and their own futures. It seems paradoxical that we have a school reform movement devoted to preparing all of our students for college, and at the same time society is choosing priorities that make college off limits for most of our youth.
Teachers are discussing how to build on this energy to shift the education debate in our nation over at the Teachers' Letters to Obama Facebook group. Join us!
What do you think? Were there protests in your area? How can we help build this movement?
Something is shifting in the education debate. There is a sense forming that since our quietly held perspectives and knowledge are not sought or respected, only our creative and bold actions will make a difference. The March 4 protests will serve to deliver this message: you cannot demand that we teach all students to high levels, then slash support for our schools.
Teachers have suffered from whiplash over the past year. Most of us supported the presidency of Barack Obama and were elated at his historic election. But the actions of his administration have been nothing less than a betrayal of our hopes.
Here is where we stand.
At the same time President Obama and Secretary Duncan make bold declarations about the prospect of schools eliminating the effects of poverty on our students, school districts across the country are being cut by billions of dollars.
One time federal funds were used last year to plug holes in state budgets, but those funds are gone and the schools are dropping off a funding cliff.
Republican politicians are refusing to find revenues to support public services, and schools face the prospect of major layoffs, increased class sizes, fewer counselors and administrators, fewer books, libraries, and computers.
School funding across the nation varies according to the wealth of local communities and their ability to raise tax revenues to support schools. This is true even in states like California where the bulk of funding comes from the state. Wealthy communities find ways to get money to their schools. Poor communities do not. Federal funding was historically used to compensate for this gap, to help the impoverished districts buy some of the supports the wealthier districts could afford. But now the Obama administration is shifting more and more of these dollars into competitive grants that reward "innovation."
Although the idea that we will have a contest and let the best ideas win and be rewarded sounds great, there are some problems here, which have recently surfaced.
Who judges the contest?
As Dean Millot pointed out recently, there are real questions of fairness and objectiviy here, especially when the judges were, until recently, employed by some of the entities applying for the grants! Millot wrote about this and found his blog post censored, and himself fired for having the nerve to raise this question.
It has become clear that the innovations that are popular are, not coincidentally, those favored by the largely corporate reform movement. These geniuses have figured out that through a strategic investment of a few million dollars here and there, they can redirect billions of dollars of federal and state funding in education towards reforms that fit their ideology, even if they do not actually work.
Former advocates of No Child Left Behind, led by Diane Ravitch, have opened their eyes to the devastation this law has created in the schools it was intended to help. The single-minded focus on test scores has fundamentally corrupted our schools, and made higher scores the only thing that matters.
This corruption infects every dimension of Obama's Race to the Top. Every reform in play is based on advancing test scores. If we have a race, we must have a means of judging winners, and the test scores remain that means, in spite of occasional acknowledgments that these scores are limited and flawed.
President Obama has repeatedly said he would move us away from this emphasis. He has had more than a year to do so. Instead he has embraced policies that raise the stakes attached to test scores even higher.
Expand charter schools? Why? They have not, on the whole, been shown to be better than traditional schools. High quality charters do not have the capacity to expand to fill the needs of our students in large numbers.
Reconstitute schools with low test scores by firing the teachers? Why? This has not been shown to work.
Change laws so teachers can be evaluated and paid based on test scores? Why? This has not been shown to increase learning.
And now our schools are being destroyed by budget cuts.
There will be no public schools left if we do not act.
Think about what our public schools represent. The people of a community decide to all send their children to the common schools. Children of different races and creeds, and different economic levels, all come together in the same classrooms. Teachers lead them in learning how to read, solve problems, and get along together. The community is responsible for supporting the school, and elects a school board to make sure it is well run.
What happens when that is destroyed? What happens to our common culture? What happens when the children of the wealthy are cloistered and secure, and those in poverty are deprived and condemned when they reveal the bruises of their mistreatment?
March 4 we walk. We stand in the rain. We raise our voices. We say we must be heard. We say we cannot stand to see our students treated this way, reduced to test scores.
Our schools have become far below basic. Our elected and appointed leaders are not listening, and we must do what has always been done when leaders do not listen. We must raise our voices in protest and demand to be heard.
Update: This morning I went to a street corner where colleagues from my former school gathered to protest. Here are several of them.
Then on my way home I encountered a noisy crowd of students, parents and teachers from Redwood Heights Elementary School, backed by the school band. One parent told me the school has been learning about Cesar Chavez, whose birthday is a school holiday in Oakland. So the students created their own signs, and led spirited chants. Here is a video and some photos I shot of their protest:
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What do you think? What is happening in your area? Will you join the protests?
(photos and video all by Anthony Cody)
Today I am posting the second part of my colleague's response to last month's column "Competition Can't Beat Collaboration." In my original post, I wrote:
Charter schools, which offer educators a worthwhile opportunity to innovate, have been touted as forcing public schools to compete for students and tax dollars. Unfortunately, although some are outstanding, they have not yielded the results that were predicted, and recent reports indicate there are huge obstacles that are likely to prevent them from scaling up to meet the promises that are being made for them.
My colleague, an education philanthropist, responds:
I can't say that I'm an expert on Race to the Top by any means, but I do like the fact that it is getting states to compete for the money. This "competition" has allowed Governors and state legislators to pass laws that would have never been passed, but for the "dangling carrot" to which you refer. But, it's not that these are necessarily bad laws, but rather because the teachers' unions have an extreme amount of power to stop anything from passing that they deem a threat to their membership. Notice, I did not say a threat to the education of kids, but rather to the threat of "their membership." I'd love to think that everything the teachers' unions do were in alignment with the needs of kids, but that's unfortunately far from the truth.
Tomorrow night, I will likely be in Harlem, witnessing a space hearing for a charter school. This charter school [Harlem Success Academy] has been doing fantastically for the kids in Harlem that it serves, with over 95% passing the NAEP in English and 100% passing in Math. (Note: kids enter by lottery so they are not "creamed" by choosing those with the best academics.) But, who has been the loudest voice of whether this school should have space in a public school building? Business Interests? No. Parents? No. Teachers' Union: Yes!
The fact that this charter school is embarrassing almost every public school in Harlem with (big breath) non-unionized teachers means they have a target on their backs. The last thing the union wants is more schools with non-unionized teachers making them look bad. People might start to question tenure and the insane process by which principals must take to get rid of a teacher, even in extreme situations. I'm sure you read the article about NYC's Rubber Room, where teachers are placed until their cases have been resolved, which usually takes years. Do parents want more of these high-performing schools, regardless of their wrapper? You bet. In fact, this one Charter Management Organization (CMO) had over 3,000 applicants for only 750 spots.
You also note that charter schools were supposed to force public schools to compete for students, but they have not yielded the results that were predicted. I would agree that they have not yielded those results to a large degree. But, this is exactly what is happening in Harlem and I'm sure it's also happening in Houston and New Orleans. When high-performing charter schools are allowed to get enough market share to truly challenge the status quo, they are forcing the public schools to compete.
You may also want to check out the study by Caroline Hoxby of Stanford where she analyzed the results of students who applied in a NYC charter lottery, but didn't get in and compares them to students who applied, but did get in. (This would seem to defeat any suggested selection bias of applicants to a charter school since both applied.) The simple answer: the students who got into these charters did better. Now, that likely has a lot to do with the fact that these charters have a longer school day and longer school year. When these kids are so far behind, they need more time not just for academics, but for chess, art, science and ballet. (In fact, the charter school I mentioned earlier has science every day, with incredible experiments and hands- on learning, starting in Kindergarten!)
You also mention that charters have large obstacles to scaling up. First, some charters should close because they stink. Just as some public schools should close for the same reason. But, if we have a highly successful charter management organization like Aspire, KIPP, etc., what are those obstacles to scaling up and why are they there? One obstacle is that charters don't usually get the same per pupil costs as their traditional public school counterparts. That seems like a fix that should be implemented.
Second, charters don't often get space in public buildings. (NYC is one unusual example to the contrary.) Third, many states have charter caps. Now, who do you think might advocate for all three of these obstacles? In New York, it's the teachers' union. Does that benefit kids? No. Does it benefit parents? No. Does it protect union jobs? Bingo! So, if you wonder why many education reformers are skeptical of "collaboration," it may just be that they've seen collaboration in the form that benefits union members, but not kids.
Update: Nancy Flanagan at Teacher in a Strange Land has shared her own response to this post on her blog. Please read and comment there as well.
What do you think? Are the unions to blame for obstructing the growth of charters? Are charters offering real competition to public schools, and thus driving improvement?
Views expressed in this blog are strictly those of the author and do not reflect the endorsement of Education Week or Editorial Projects in Education, which take no editorial positions.
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