Posts Tagged ‘charter schools’

Another Day, Another Look at Charter Schools

Wednesday, January 27th, 2010

Now that California, one of many states, has raised the cap on the number of charter schools allowed to apply for licenses each year, it’s time to look again at the realities of the charter school controversy.

California elementary charter school

California elementary charter school

Why do some praise charter schools as the savior of education in the United States?

Why are others cautious, if not outright antagonistic?

The charter school movement came to life in 1988 in Minnesota with the idea to design schools with “renewable licenses to innovate, free of most school district rules.” (John Merrow, “When Roads Diverge…”edweek.org) In 1992 the first charter school opened in Minnesota, followed soon by California after passage of the Charter School Act of 1992 and which now is #2 in the list of schools chartered.

Still charter schools have not, so far, swept over the country.  Let’s look at more numbers.  There are 4000 charter schools in 40 states and DC with 1.3 million students.  Minnesota has the most schools and California in 2009 has 700 charter schools out of 10,000 public schools with 4% of the 6.3 million students.

Even so, Michelle Rhee, superintendent of Washington DC schools, Antonio Villaraigosa, mayor of Los Angeles, and Michael Bloomberg, mayor of New York, all are doing their best to restructure their school districts by closing low-performing schools and reopening with smaller charter schools, often in the same building.

Why so?

Money.  State regulations for licensing charter schools have been revised in pursuit of federal Race to the Top funds geared mostly toward low-performing high schools, a desperate problem in large urban areas.  Limited data available does show that charter high schools outperform similar traditional high schools.  In addition, in California at least, charter high schools attract more disadvantaged Hispanic students, one of the groups the state must target for academic help.

Strong teachers and administrators who want to get away from the system of traditional public schools with union contracts that were needed for a long while, but now restrict change, love the idea of starting over with a new school.

In addition, high-performing charters are small schools (average 350 students) with longer school days and year, more time devoted to English language study, a clear academic mission, a moderate discipline policy.  Those schools do well on the assessments to ensure a license renewal.

Top charters really have tried to innovate.

K-5 Conservatory Lab Charter School in the Boston area led by Diana Lam, long time administrator, uses a curricular model called Learning Through Music to support students who must improve their academic achievement.  Teacher contract innovation also is a goal.  A management team is designing the pay formula based on 5 levels of teacher performance, each level geared to identify a teacher as s/he becomes more experienced.  In addition, the teachers collaborate, using the Cycle of Inquiry model to assess, analyze, and modify teaching strategies.

City Arts and Technology High School set in a working class San Francisco neighborhood is one of Envision Schools, a non-profit group of model charter high schools.  The curriculum is rigorous, students collaborate on learning projects, and support is available to ensure all 365 students do well on state exams.

What’s wrong?

Nothing, except those exceptional schools are having difficulty being replicated across the country and time is of the essence.  For instance, in California, elementary charter schools are less likely to serve minorities, English Language Learners, and low-income students.  The schools are small, not reaching enough children.  Studies of outcome data for many charter schools have not shown better results than traditional public schools.

Often said, the parent buyer must beware.  Disinformation has been generated about charter schools, emphasizing their good qualities, denigrating perfectly good public schools, and hiding the fact that 14% of charter schools lose their licenses, just like traditional public schools fall into the low-performance abyss.

Finally, a number of professionals associated with the education field see charter schools as a way to privatize education, paid for with public money.  Others who praise charter schools do so because they hope to drag down teachers’ unions that are accused of holding onto a fixed pay structure which offers no incentives to excel.

Looking again?

Teacher’s pay structure is being re-evaluated, but the public must support the thousands of public schools looking for a model to help students achieve, instead of antagonizing the very highly-qualified teachers needed to close the achievement gap.

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Posted in Race to Top, cycle of inquiry, highly qualified teachers, low-performing schools, public schools |
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School Business

Wednesday, December 30th, 2009

Let’s look at schools as businesses.  You need a business economist’s point of view to understand how and why some of the latest premises to reform schools have appeared.

Education Next’s April 2009 interview “Many Schools Are Still Inadequate-now what?” featured the Hoover Institution’s Eric Hanushek who has done a lot of writing on education reform, lawyer Alfred Lindseth, and Michael Rebell from Teacher’s College at Columbia whose focus is on court decisions that have affected education change.  The focus of the article was on Lindseth and Hanushek’s book about the funding-student achievement puzzle and Rebell’s concerns with aspects of reform advocated in the proposal.

Most teachers and administrators, both local and state, already agree on several reforms outlined in the article:

  • give local schools flexibility to determine a model to meet high standards
  • establish reasonable funding based on needs of the particular school and school district (including local tax payer ability to authorize bonds or establish education foundations to upgrade school financial support)
  • best of the reforms, commit to evaluate school and program effectiveness using continuous improvement models such as “cycle of inquiry”-originating from business models of improvement

Sounds good.

Difficulties arise in the evidence to support other aspects of the proposal since all must be interlocked to achieve reform, according to Lindseth and Hanushek.

The two issues that stand out are the plan for performance-based pay, a business oriented policy, and the plan to increase the choice for vouchers and charter schools, seen as sanctions against schools or districts where students haven’t achieved designated levels of proficiency.

Pay-for-performance:  Mr. Hanushek is strongly against limits on spending and regulations for the use of funds provided by state and federal sources.  Further, he wants to do away with contractual obligations, mainly negotiated with unions.

Then, teachers would be rewarded for success in, for example, improving student achievement, bonuses for teaching in hard-to-staff schools, higher pay for taking on subjects with teacher shortages.  These are all “value-added” factors used to determine the teachers’ salary or bonus for the year.  (Exact procedures for setting up this plan were not part of the article.)

Vouchers and charter schools:  Not only would schools and teachers be rewarded, but well-articulated and decisive consequences would be imposed on schools not meeting the goals.  Liberal distribution of vouchers and transfers to charter schools are the sanctions advocated.  If a public school is deemed unsatisfactory, it is unclear how to guarantee that a student’s voucher or charter school choice would be suitable.  How to fund this change is not described in the article.

Enter Michael Rebell from Teacher’s College who does not agree with the data and statistics used as evidence for the Lindseth and Hanushek book.  He says, and many who might read the article (or book) would say, that testing outcomes, pay-for-performance, rewards and sanctions, vouchers and charter schools have been studied for a long time with mixed results.

Readers may also agree the reform proposal is based on unproven business models that may, but haven’t yet, shown great results.  The move to privatization of education may be an economist’s preference, but has not yet shown to improve the academic proficiency for the vast number of students needing help.  For example, is California with more than 6 million students going to privatize every school and turn each student into a perfect product?

Rebell supports standards-based reform, but maintains it is a state education policy goal, supported by ideas from business world economists, researchers in the legal and university community, and especially teacher leaders.

Finally, perhaps the book, but not the article, describes how to resolve the funding problems due to the heterogeneity of students and regions in the United States that underlie the challenges for the education world.

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Posted in cycle of inquiry, public schools, school finance reform, school reform |
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It Gets Dark Early

Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009

Autumn days have zipped by.  I’ve met with the parents of every student in my class and sent home report cards for the first of three evaluation periods.  We’ve been to Mission San Juan Bautista, the culmination of the first unit of California history, from the Native Americans to the explorers to the Californios, settlers governed from Spain and later Mexico.

This year, writing process procedures have been established much earlier than I managed last year.  Most are busy writing the third or fourth in a collection of pieces, non-fiction personal narrative or reports on, for example, the Miwok, California Native American tribe.  “How to Annoy the Teacher,” is a composition that seems to be loved by all, even the most conscientious, well-behaved students.  They can fantasize by leaps and bounds.

Not long after the latest update on our district school budget problems was presented at a staff meeting, I read an article on the front page of the Sunday, November 15, New York Times, “Selling Lesson Plans Online, Teachers Raise Cash and Questions” by Winnie Hu.

While I can find an abundance of lessons and teaching ideas to download on the Internet, this was the first I’d heard about selling lesson plans.  I suppose, in a free market society, teachers can sell their plans, just like a book or a better potato masher.  It may make sense if the money is used to upgrade the materials in the classroom, but when I read that someone had used the cash for new kitchen countertops, I thought enough is enough.  Want to see the new thing?  Check out Teachers Pay Teachers.

Just shows, though, the problem for teachers who wish to be innovative and have access to the best for their students and the inability of taxpayers, even those wishing schools well, to bring themselves to pay for the success of public schools in this country.

Here’s another school budgets issue. I was talking to my sister-in-law who has a six-year-old in a Los Angeles charter school because the local public school is too big and too overwhelmed by second language and poor families.  She didn’t think her child would get enough attention.  Funny thing, the charter school uses classrooms in the public school building which leads to complaints on both sides about space, storage, and access to the playground.

My cousin sent a series of articles from the September 2009 Denver Post on charter schools, detailing the sunny-side-up viewpoint of the League of Charter Schools and the down-side views of longtime public school educators.  A “Letter to the Editor” from Louise Benson, Broomfield, Colorado, way back on Sunday, September 20, suggested my point of view: improvement for public schools means “teachers and staff buy in to programs known to increase achievement, and… avoid some union work rules that impede better instruction.”

Late November my class started its unit on earth science, analyzing rocks from each strata of the earth’s crust, delving down to the core of burning magma, always enjoyed by fourth graders.

What got in the way?

My jury duty summons from the Santa Clara County Superior Court arrived in the mail.  Same problem for every working adult, it came just at the wrong moment.  I spent my time writing lesson plans that will disrupt the class as little as possible, while doing my citizen’s duty checking on the Internet daily to see if my number had come up.

I never had to go to court, we spent our days looking at rocks and using all the strategies I know and the lesson plans I’ve gathered (without paying a penny) to make sure my students are achieving.

I feel lucky.  The parents in my district are happy with its highly-qualified teachers, innovations, and facilities; not asking to set up a charter school with funds from my strapped district.

Next is the Gold Rush unit.  Nuggets of shiny metal from the dark earth glittered in men’s eyes, a symbol of California wealth, hidden right now in the dark of the state legislature.

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Posted in highly qualified teachers, public schools |
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Pay for Performance?

Wednesday, October 7th, 2009

How did the business model term, “pay for performance,” morph into the preferred way to assess teachers–by the number of student’s proficient on a test?

The issue has risen in an effort to turn around low-performing schools.

In 1992 the California state legislature set rules to allow charter schools, financed with the same money that would otherwise go to a traditional public school, often perceived as playing on the monetary issue.

Over time, according to statistics from state exams that public-financed charter school students must take, elementary charter school performance is “neither better nor worse” than traditional public schools.

Pay, however,  is often an issue.  See “As More Charter Schools Unionize, Educators Debate the Effect,” by Sam Dillon, The New York Times, July 27, 2009.

So, what next?

Advocated by the Department of Education’s Race to the Top plan to close the achievement gap in low-performing schools, one strongly advised mechanism to improve student achievement is “performance pay.”

Somehow, based on their students’ scores on one test and parent feedback, teachers will find the offer of better pay an incentive to work harder.  While the model may provide an incentive to complete tasks in the office or factory in an efficient manner, thus improving production, that is not how a school is organized.

A successful school is one where children are supported by teachers who know the curriculum and the best strategies to teach.  The parents, staff, and administration animate students to learn and the buildings are safe.  Exams are one tool used to analyze where students are doing well and where they need another technique or tool to master the subject.  Such a school needs adequate funds, but “performance pay” is not the incentive.

In California for a few years before the state budget went haywire, “school-based pay” bonuses were the rage.  Successful schools, measured by the state’s Academic Performance Index (API), received a substantial amount of money to use at the school site.  Rumbles of discontent began to surface over which schools received awards and why, but the plan was dropped when funds dried up.

Some schools in some districts, Los Angeles Unified for one, have tried various plans, often called “merit pay.”  Teachers vote to waive tenure and the salary schedule negotiated by the local union for the possibility of making a larger salary if classroom instruction improves and their students do well on state exams.  Some plans have been dropped; none have become institutionalized yet.

Another plan is negotiated around “knowledge and skill-based” pay.  A district like Douglas County Schools in Colorado, set in a well-to-do area, has few problems with meeting benchmarks on state exams.  The plan addresses pay for extra duty, for professional development, for meeting goals on an evaluation plan.  The incentive pay relies on foundation support and grants.

On the other hand, the school where I worked in San Jose Unified School District with the goal of school improvement on the API, budgeted monies for time spent on professional development and leadership meetings after school hours, and set aside monies for substitutes to allow teachers to analyze test data and plan strategies to improve student learning.  Over time, student performance improved.

Here was a kind of “knowledge and skill-based” pay about which Robert Weil of American Federation of Teachers has remarked, “The best performance plans are standard operating procedure.”  See “Pay for Performance: What Are the Issues?” by Ellen R. Dalisio, Education World, 2006.

None of these models address this question:  how does performance pay help schools turn around when the sole burden on the teacher’s back is how well students do on a single test?

Here and Now in the Education World will look at those issues in the next post.

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Posted in Academic Performance Index, American Federation of Teachers, Race to Top, low-performing schools, public schools, successful schools |
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Not a Gap-It’s a Chasm

Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009

In California education talk, the most important words are “achievement gap.”  Next most important are the tangle called “school finance reform.”

The two problem/solutions are as thorny as the briar patch at the edge of the moat surrounding Sleeping Beauty’s castle.

As if more money in itself is going to solve the multitude of education needs to close the achievement gap, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is calling a special session in the Fall to design legislation ensuring the state’s ability to compete for Race to the Top (RTTT) federal funds.

Actually, the education world should be relieved that the real issues may finally come to the fore.

Federal Department of Education guidelines for any state plan expect measures to turn around struggling schools.  This blog has outlined one of many proposals and its recommendations (post 6/30/09).

Lawmakers’ first argument will be about repealing California’s charter school cap, a no-no for the National Education Association (NEA).  Their argument is that school governance by charter schools is only one of many options to improve the chances for low-income, at-risk students to achieve, while in the federal RTTT guidelines charter schools are being treated as the one best way to achieve student progress.

California students will benefit from the guidelines’ focus on the 5% of consistently under-performing schools.  It will, however, require money to provide consistent staff development for on-site assessment and analysis tools that help students; train, recruit, and retain highly-qualified teachers; and supply resources to keep those schools running smoothly.

Which highlights the section in the governor’s proposal to retain highly-qualified teachers and administrators.  For a long time, education articles have argued for pay arrangements to accommodate the difficulties for teachers in the most under-performing schools.  In truth, coaches or advisors to support the teacher’s best practices and counseling services for students and parents would do as much if not more to create incentives for achievement.

The last two pieces of the federal Department of Education guidelines to be debated in the legislature’s special session will leave lawmakers teetering on the edge of the chasm.  Improving accountability and linking student achievement to teacher performance are the most prickly of issues.

First, think about accountability.  How the state uses the data from one summative exam a year to designate successful and unsuccessful schools does little good.  How each school analyzes all the data collected from formative tests and uses it to diagnose what to teach next has been proven, for the few staffs trained in the techniques, to help students improve.  How will schools improve student performance with no funds to train teachers how to analyze the data?

Next, as the NEA in its letter to the U.S. Department of Education says, “It is inappropriate to require that states be able to link data on student achievement to individual teachers for the purpose of teacher and principal evaluation.”  Governor Schwarzenegger’s press release notes linked data may provide transparency, but numerous sources give reasons why it’s difficult for a single test’s data to inform anyone  how one teacher assures that an under-performing school closes the achievement gap.

It will take a lot of compromise to fairly make choices about evaluation of highly-qualified teachers and a process to ensure proficient student achievement.

Have your eyes caught the words “money” and “funds?”  In California (post 8/19) the tallest thorny vines surround the abysmal school finance system that hides the chasm, delicately referred to as the “achievement gap.”

No matter the bite from the $4.3 billion RTTT funds California might get if the legislature manages to rewrite education policies, one sure way to seal the achievement gap is to reform how state money is allocated to school districts.

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Posted in Race to Top, highly qualified teachers, low-performing schools, public schools, school accountability, school finance reform |
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