This is huge.
Governor Deval Patrick will unveil a proposal today to nearly double the number of charter school seats allowed in the state’s worst-performing districts, a move expected to trigger a fierce debate on Beacon Hill and send tremors through local school systems. The proposal, which requires legislative approval, would create an estimated 27,000 new charter school seats in about 30 districts across the state, from Boston to the Berkshires, according to a copy of draft legislation obtained by the Globe. Lawmakers were briefed on the plan yesterday.
Doubling the charter school seats in those districts is far more aggressive than the initial plan Patrick outlined in January, and represents a dramatic departure for a governor who had previously resisted calls to lift the state-imposed limit on new charters.
More details:
The state places a limit on the number of charter schools statewide, as well as limits in individual districts. While about 60 more charter schools statewide can open under current law, many urban districts, such as Boston, are near the local cap, which limits each district’s spending on charter tuition to 9 percent of its annual net school spending. The governor’s proposal would increase that limit to 18 percent, 6 percentage points higher than he proposed in January. In Boston, the increase would add more than 5,000 seats, enabling many of the city’s approximately 16 charter schools to expand and opening the door for many new charter schools.
Why now?
The governor’s push comes as President Obama is threatening to withhold millions in federal stimulus dollars from states that hinder charter school growth. The US secretary of education, Arne Duncan, will join the governor at a press conference today unveiling the legislation, which will be filed today.
What say you, knowledgeable BMGers? Many of the schools are in rough shape, and most of Boston’s mayoral candidates (including Menino) have embraced some form of charter expansion. Is it time to give this a shot?
How will their differences ensure they’re actually better? I have my doubts. Education can’t stop at the school doors; if there’s a problem at home, it’s going to have a tremendous impact on the student. I don’t think we need charter schools to solve those problems — we need longer days, more days, free, available tutors and activities in school that can add some enthusiasm to the day.
I agree with Ryan on most points but worry about knee-jerk reactions that could backfire on kids. I have thought in the past that a longer day would help students compete vs students form other countries ( especially in math and science). A longer day for the sake of a longer day could bore the crap out of kids. Here are some ideas that I think could work:
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p>1. Kids in Arizona and other places go to school on a different schedule. They have a more breaks throughout the year and less long blocks of time away from school. I feel the summer break is too long for most kids. Continuity of the learning environment is broken when you have nothing to do for 2 months ( July and August).
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p>2. Teach the basics but inspire with curriculum choices that kids are excited about ( film production, web design, digital media arts, etc etc). When you are interested in something you will learn more.
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p>3. Consider the parents lifestyle. How many parents have jobs that allow for a 8 to 230 school schedule? If a parent is running form one place to the other to make it all work, how can they be a fully engaged mentor at home? Maybe school should start at noon and end at 6pm? I dont know if anything can be done to make parents lives better, but at least it should be considered when making decisions about schools.
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p>SOme of these ideas may be dumb and thats ok. The goal should be to take a new perspective as to how we design and support our schools, no idea is a bad one, the more people involved the better the outcome.
with the extra time spent on phys ed, art, music, robotics, that sort of thing? It stimulates the mind and body (good), it fosters creativity (good), helps fight obesity (good), helps tie “school” with “fun things during the day” (good), etc etc.
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p>Schools have squeezed so much class time into the full day that these other things have been removed in exchange for more learning minutes. I don’t begrudge the decision, but I would like to see those other parts brought back. I believe they’d help the “whole child” and I believe they’d help the academic learning process too.
by squeezing them out of the day, you’re creating a tiered class — those families who can afford to provide their children with those opportunities and those who can’t. Given that these things do stimulate the child and generally help them excel at other areas, academically, this is something we cannot leave up to class if we’re to be an America where all are born equal. A fair attempt at creating equal opportunity or near equal opportunity means we need to provide these sorts of classes and experiences to all children in public schools.
If it was done on a statewide basis I could get behind a full school year with far more vacations, I read that reading comprehension for kids who aren’t reading during the summer drops by as much as half a grade.
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p>If we’re going to have longer days, and a longer school year, however, we have to pay teachers more. Increase teaching time by 20%, increase pay by 20%. While we’re at it, we should start paying low income parents to attend school activities. Just like we need a paid sick leave plan for all workers, we need paid school leave for parents.
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p>One of the big advantages wealthier suburban school districts have over lower income school districts is volunteer labor through parents. It’s a inequity that’s can be solved.
is we don’t necessarily have to force teachers to work longer. We also just hire more teachers, ensuring that teachers get an additional period or two off (or to prepare classes, help tutor students in study halls, etc.). Honestly, it would probably end up being some sort of combination of both — a need for more teachers, and a need for teachers to teach just a little bit more each day.
but in Massachusetts and other states of similar climate, the weather is. You would have to air condition every school that is not currently air conditioned, and that is simply not feasible. In my brand new school–the doors opened three years ago–classroom temps reach 100 degrees in June and September when the days are routinely in the 80s. Students cannot learn and teachers cannot teach when they are dripping sweat onto the desks. Personally, I wouldn’t mind a full year with intermittent breaks. I’d love to take a fall vacation. But until something is done about the HVAC issues, it ain’t ever going to happen.
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p>While skill loss is a problem for some students, studies show that student make up that ground in short order, usually in a matter of a few weeks. Students for whom skill deterioration is a problem are often students with disabilities and they are (usually) on plans. These students are identified at the end of each year, generally, and are recommended for summer school.
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to play “catch up” is actually a big deal. If it takes 10-15+ days for a student to catch up to where they were last year, that’s 5-10% of the entire school year. There’s only 180 days right now, after all.
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p>I do agree, though, that there are some short-term investments that would have to be made in our infrastructures if we were to have full-year schools, including AC.
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p>I don’t think we need to have full year, but I think a month off in the summer (July), plus a week or two in June, would perfectly suffice.
doing nothing but rehashing the prior year. That is not the case. The skills we are talking about are recalled and refined through corollary and parallel work. As an English teacher, I don’t go back and reteach what I taught when students “forget,” I prompt and move forward and they “recall” through processing familiar material. The deterioration of skills is remedied, in other words, not by reteaching but by prompting the student to recall what s/he has already learned.
I don’t think 3 hours of math class is going to be helpful. I tried to make that point when I said,
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p>I was at school for one thing or another till 7pm almost every day back in the early 00s. So, a lot of kids are getting this anyway. However, disadvantaged students aren’t getting the same opportunities and access to things like tutors, etc. Furthermore, many disadvantaged kids have problems at home — be it a parent who works too much to keep a close eye on them, or far more serious problems, like family drug abuse, etc. So I’d like to see a situation where “home work” is getting done at school, instead of at home. Not only do we lose students at home, but doing this work at school could enable us to offer tutors for when students where need students need extra help, etc.
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p>How would a school like that work? I’d much rather the experts decide, but I would hope there’d be time added to the day for study periods, (free) extracurricular activities, and classes that would be engaging and fun — the arts, musics and electives like civics or practical classes that would actually help students, with practical information, for when they graduate (ie web, computer, financial, etc.) Shifting some extracurriculars from after school to throughout the day may help break up the day, too, reinvigorating students so they’re prepared to learn again.
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p>Additionally, we need to help students’ lives in other ways, beyond schools. Health care reform could help. We could pass a living wage. We could provide more free school lunches for those in need… and breakfasts, too.
It’s important that charter schools are held to the same level of accountability as any other school. No one is really minding the store at the Department of Education. I know they have an accountability office; call over there and see how toothless they are.
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p>1. Special Education – my personal experience with a charter school is that they bully special ed kids right out of the program. Rules? Regulations? They are run like fiefdoms, and kids can be suspended, suspended, suspended until their parents give up and put the kid back in their local standard school. I knew of a kid with a serious mental illness, and the school, despite an ed plan and diagnosis, continued to suspend him without convening a hearing as required by regulation. They kept this up until his mother couldn’t take it any more.
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p>2. Incestuous Boards of Trustees. This aforementioned mother couldn’t get any traction on her concerns because the trustees were either a) related to one another and/or worked at city hall, b) had loved ones working in the Charter, c) had kids in the program and d)chose to do go along with the Director of the program because they knew where their bread was buttered.
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p>3. Lottery? Right. How is it mathematically possible that every kid whose parent is a mayor, local politician, police, chamber of commerce…manages to get in the program…while others can wait for years?
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p> Charter schools are not being responsible to their special education obligations and seek to avoid them by bullying children into their local public schools or by counseling them out. Given that public schools have to take everybody (they don’t get to bully special needs kids out of the schools)it’s an unfair competitive advantage they have over the traditional public school system.
Ultimately, neither of my kids could be educated in our towns “one size fits all” factory schools. Nor did Charter schools, who were not interested in dealing with dyspraxia and obsessive-compulsive disorder or ADHD have any “room at the Inn” for my kids.
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p>For example, when I suggested in our town that of the seven elementary schools at least one become k-8 so that my emotionally slower in maturing child – with an IQ of 138 – did not have to change classes six times a day I was told a resounding NO.
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p>She is 23 and we are still paying off the private school tuition we financed for six years in a k-08 and alternate high school for her even though she is 23.
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p>I would like to see this whole discussion focus on acceptance of different learning styles and modes – and Charter Schools in terms of my work as a Guardian ad Litem did NOT meet the needs of even one “high maintenance special needs student”. Period. Without exception.
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p>Charter schools seem to me, at least from my data set, to be the factory school model but under a different name with a hand-picked population.
As an educator, I have to say this solution is grossly simplistic:
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p>I’m not an advocate for charter schools at all, but I am an advocate of education reform and current progressive methodologies and approaches that meet student needs.
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p>Having said that, simply extending the school day or year without restructuring curriculum, instruction, and assessment is not going to amount to much of anything. If curriculum, instruction, and assessment are reformed to attain meaningful new goals and objectives, then the length of the day or year is actually irrelevant. Long, hard discussions about what teachers do is needed, but few schools are willing to really go down that road. Few schools or even teachers can effectively answer the following essential questions: 1. What do kids need to know? 2. How will we know when they know it? 3. What do we do if they don’t know it? And that is a huge problem.
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p>Tutors are a mixed bag. Throwing a smart human at a kid or kids doesn’t make for effective tutoring. Structured programs with tutors who are trained to support students–either as peers or as community volunteers–have a better shot at producing effective support for students. Studies show, however, that students learn better from properly trained teachers, so utilizing teachers in the most effective way will usually render formal tutoring programs moot.
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p>Activities in school is vague. What sort of activities? When? When is an activity a distraction? When is an activity a welcome break? What do you do with the kids who aren’t enriched by “activities” in the traditional sense? Each school, particularly high and middle schools, must assess its own culture and decide how and when to break the momentum of the day as well as how the activities or activity period connect with the students learning and individual goals.
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p>Education has a checkered past when it comes to visioning reform. Either it jumps off a cliff (open classroom anyone?) or it dithers at the edge for eons. While teacher unions can be tremendously obstructionist, they can also, with effective leadership, take bold steps. The key, however, to all building-based reform (including moving unions along) is leadership in that CEO position–the school principal. It is my firm belief that the current crop of school principals is woefully ill prepared to move schools forward given the ridiculous demands placed upon them by state mandate. I’m blessed to have as a principal teacher in my school who is someone with vision and courage. We could not be doing the things we are doing without him, and we’re pretty out there on the edge. I can honestly say that many schools, however, are going nowhere fast, and that the bandaid suggestions we hear bandied about so often are simply distractions that keep meaningful change from occurring.
My toddler goes to “school” from 8:15-5:15. Granted, she gets to take a nap, and “instruction” isn’t all that rigorous.
The eight year old’s situation is more complex and often less convenient (or more expensive) for two working parents.
You guys make many good points in this thread- I just wanted to throw that out there.
is already possible with the Extended Learning Schools program, which exists in many public school systems, and gets implemented with the blessing and participation of the local union. There is no need to expand charters if “more time” is the issue.
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p>Charters are segregated populations that punish local public school systems. The School Committee organization opposes them…why?
I work for a charter school, so grain of salt here.
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p>Illinois just voted to lift their charter school cap, with 120 more statewide and 40 in Chicago alone. (So did Indiana. Louisiana is about to).
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p>Illinois State House voted unanimously. State Senate was 45 to 10.
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p>There, both TEACHERS UNIONS supported the bill. So did the SEIU.
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p>I asked my national SEIU friend why all the IL unions there supported it. She said:
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p>The new head of the national AFT, Randi Weingarten, had her union start 2 charters in NYC.
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p>It remains to be seen if either of the MA unions will follow the Illinois teachers unions. We already have card check here for charters.
If the district that the charter is in is union, it’s automatically union and the pay and benefit rates for the district are automatically in place until a contract is negotiated at the school. If the teachers want to get rid of the union, they do it the same way they do now, get 30% to sign a petition and hold an election.
“So Illinois, why did you support Charter?”
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p>1: Politicians: for the Federal cash.
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p>2: SEIU: because we’re being prevented from raiding teachers unions, and with a fresh set of new nonunion charters we can make inroads.
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p>3: Yeah, yeah, change, hope, brotherhood and some other stuff. I forget.
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p>Different for Mass?
Illinois charter law keeps the charters in the school district, does not negatively impact local budgets, are unionized and have to get local school committee approval before they can open. Big difference. In MA, funding hurts district, unions are strongly discouraged and can open despite opposition by local community and school committee (see recent example in Gloucester).
Sounds similar to school choice in Cambridge prior to charter schools. There was a very active choice program in Cambridge, with schools initated based on community support, through the school committee.
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p>The maxim of “funds following the child” misses the problem that municipalities are still held responsible both for providing the bulk of funding for schools and for providing a school for every child in the district. This is partly an issue of stranded assets – schools where built and sized for a certain population years ago, the state’s school age population has been declining slightly for most of the duration of the charter school movement, and thus charter schools have exacerbated issues of critical mass for the existing school systems.
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p>This is particularly a problem outside a few cities, where critical mass often results in a need for regionalization. Would you choose to move to a town where kids are bussed 45 minutes to join students from seven other towns? Would you be happy if your kids public elementary school in a district like that was forced to shut down because of a dozen kids going to charter schools, meaning that a couple hundred kids bus riding time doubled and the local community focus of an elementary school vanished?
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p>Public choice has been pressured by a funding formula that has been left alone for years – with a cap of $5000 per student. Where a district may have to pay $12000 to send a kid to a charter, they can only get $5000 in to the district if someone comes from another town to a public school. Where we live, we’re seeing less public choice slots opened – because it makes less and less sense every year financially – while many parents find the option of choosing between public schools to provide better options for their kids than charter schools.
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p>As far as Patrick’s choice, why not? He’s got control over the federal funding, while he doesn’t have to take the blame for property taxes that go up as a result of charter schools, nor does the state take more than token responsibility for funding charter schools. It’s like the rest of the state’s funding formulas – when the state has to pay for something, they’re cautious, but when municipalities have to pay the bill instead, the state’s formulas are full speed ahead.
I represent teachers in a public school system.
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p>Arne and Barack support charters because in Illinois, the funding formula doesn’t punish the local school. The state provides necessary funding. There are only a few states that punish the local sending schools…Massachusetts is among the most punitive.
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p>Massachusetts charter schools are union-eligible; but so far the state organizations have shied away since they oppose the funding formula. However, AFT-Massachusetts has organized the Brighton Charter after the teachers in the charter asked them to. MTA does not presently organize charters, which I think is a mistake, and argued against.
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p>If charters expand and charters abuse teachers (why do charters have such an abysmal record of teacher retention?), you can look to increasing unionization. I certainly hope so.
Barack Obama, March 2009:
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p>How much more clear can he be?
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p>They actually added the “wherever” line SPECIFICALLY to respond to folks saying “Yes the POTUS supports charters but not OUR state’s type of charters.”
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p>Obama and Duncan are aware that most charters are non-union.
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p>They are well aware that in almost every state, the charter funding follows the student.
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p>I think you’re well within your rights to characterize this as “punish” or “abuse.” I disagree.
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p>But it’s now established that Obama and Duncan, aware of the variation of types of state charter laws, have not just requested, but DEMANDED that schools repeal charter caps.
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p>Different topic: what do you think of the Readiness Schools proposal? Will your district seek to start some of those?
…they advocate for more charters. It seems bold, it seems visionary, it seems like a real change and it makes union-busters, private industry, and local cranks happy. It’s an easy way to deal with a difficult problem. And considering that both Obama and Patrick barely touched on education during their campaigns, it’s no surprise that they go for the easy answer.
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p>Basically, the whole idea of a charter is to give an enterprise full public money without giving them full public restrictions. They are given equal resources to do an easier job, so no surprise they seem to do better — and everyone thinks that charters are the answer.
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p>If Deval talked about tripling capacity in vocational or magnet schools — schools that serve students interests rather than pressure group interests, I’d take him seriously.
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p>I don’t normally quote myself, however, I try to place charters within a wider context in this post I wrote much earlier, excerpted below:
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p>Links in the original.
I’ve often wondered why we don’t have more magnet schools in MA. I’m a big fan of Sci&Math charters, Arts charters, the works.
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p>Why not have magnet boarding schools in (some of) Boston/Cambridge, Worcester, Springfield, New Bedford, Lowell, Pittsfield, Barnstable? They could be 11-12 or 9-12, and could come with free tuition to all MA public universities upon 3.00 GPA+ graduation to help keep the best and brightest in the public unis, which boosts their reputation and increases the odds that those talented kids stay in MA as adults.
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p>Why not have strong, available vocational schools so that kids who want to use their hands to help people can make a natural transition, leading to a stable middle class lifestyle.
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p>Why not have special ed ‘magnets’, where specific kinds of specialties can work with particular challenges, complete with economies of scale, appropriate equipment, and real expertise? I’m not looking to go backward 50 years and institutionalize kids, but if the parents want their child in this kind of environment and it can provide better than the local school can, why not… the kid benefits, and the local school saves resources to use for all the other kids at the school, thereby benefiting them too. It also would help remove some of the variance in the budget that a single very special needs kid brings with him or her when moving into the district (sometimes in late August!).
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p>I like the idea of school choice. I like some with a competitive application process (perhaps ensuring geographic/income distribution), I like some with themes (tech, arts, vocational, etc), and I like spreading them throughout the state to help bring different parts together and help bridge the Boston vs. ~Boston paradigm.
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p>None of that requires charter schools.
I thought innovative ideas like boarding schools, extended day, and magnet and vocational schools could NOT be explored with public schools since union rules restrict them to a 6 hour day, 180 days a year, and basically if they get state or local funding force them to conform with the standard rules of public schools.
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p>I know in Cambridge its basically impossible for elementary schools to experiment with class size, class day, and boarding options for those kind of legal reasons but perhaps that is a Cambridge specific standard.
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p>If we could have innovation inside traditional public schools than I would support that, but I thought the whole point of charter schools was that they were free to experiment and set their own policies independent of school boards, unions, and other regulatory bodies?
This is something I hadn’t even considered. What’s the dealio, BMGers with education|union experience and knowledge?
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p>The state requires that elementary schools schedule 900 hours of what is called time on learning, secondary schools schedule 990, and that the school year be 180 days long. Lunch, recess, homeroom, passing, etc., do not count as time on learning. There is no regulation speaking to the number of hours in a day. That is usually bargained in union contracts.
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p>In order to change the length of a day, the district administration would have to bargain or impact bargain for that change. School funding has nothing to do with any of this. There are some districts that have run 4-day weeks at particular times or split sessions at others. None of these configurations jeopardies either state or local funding.
Union “rules” is just another way of saying the union contract, which is negotiated on a regular basis by both the elected representatives of the teachers and the school administration. Only the state sets rules that can’t be changed, everything else is negotiable – but when the teacher is being asked to pay for all the changes, you can understand where a level of skepticism might arise.
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p>We can have innovation inside a traditional public school and in some districts, even those where teachers are union, we do.
A. To piggyback on dhamnmer, the only union “rule” that stymies faux reformers is the expectation that when more work is asked of employees, more compensation is offered.
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p>B. I’ve never seen a 6-hour day or a 180-day year. I have 7.5/183 in a public school.
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p>C. Innovation is a daily reality in public schools. Sure, nobody makes money off of most of it, but it happens every day. If you’re talking about a large program change (because having one of the top public systems in the world just isn’t good enough) that happens too in public schools. There are extended day schools out there, I have extended year students at the moment. I’ve worked in schools with a range of models for middle school — but alas, it doesn’t benefit private industry so nobody buys the ad space to flog it.
It might be the top school system state wide when we count in all the wealthy all-white suburbs that kick ass on the MCAS tests, but what about Lowell? What about Lynn? What about Dorchester High or Hyde Park High which have stabbings INSIDE the school building and high drop out rates?
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p>What about Cambridge which spends the most per capita on its students but still has only an 85% graduation rate?
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p>I know the most about Cambridge and my high school served me quite well but left many, many students who desperately needed help behind. We were resource and funding rich unlike the inner city schools that are really doing terrible-and still had high drop out rates, awful college attendance rates, and a serious MCAS problem that has only recently been addressed.
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p>Moreover if the public schools really are the top of the state why are so many inner city families waiting for their shot at METCO spots or charter schools? We is the demand for an alternative to traditional public schools exceeding the supply if they are working so well in those areas?
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p>I think you are looking at the big picture and thinking Massachusetts has no education problem. But you were not a student who had to go through MCAS, you haven’t attended a high school where you peers can’t graduate? You haven’t sat in on atrocious remedial math classes or clueless school boards. You haven’t had a mother and sister nearly bankrupt themselves to send your nephew to a private school because his learning disability wasn’t even caught by the public schools he attended let alone were addressed by them. A public school system that fails even a single child, let alone 15% of them is not a top school in my opinion.
I am not saying charter schools are the solution-again I don’t know and that’s why I asked. I am saying though that if you are merely defending the status quo than you are out of touch on education in Massachusetts. We need innovation in the public schools, frankly I would prefer to see them stay within the public schools because of local control, oversight, and it keeps federal and state money in the hands of local government instead of private holders. But to say MA schools are the top in the world and that we shouldn’t advocate a change in education-that just doesn’t make sense.
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p>I’ve never got the impression that the job was automatically easier in charter schools. There isn’t anything like ‘tenure’ and some charter schools have failed, which must have been quiet a bit less easier than you let on. It seems to me that much depends on the charter itself: that is to say the actual document, which differs from school to school, and encompass a wide variety of teaching philosophies. All that is just to say that nothing, insofar as I can see it, prohibits a ‘charter’ school from encompassing ‘magnet’, ‘vocational’ and any other modality you might wish to mention, in the actual charter.
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p>When I hear a politician, who is not a schoolteacher, advocate for charter schools I hear a politician saying “I don’t know how to build schools, lets leave it to the professionals to build the schools and give them the resources.” Implicit in this, for the lazy politician, is as you alledge: an appetizer for union busting and private industry hacks. So then the fulcrum becomes not whether or not to allow charter schools but who writes the charters? And How?
…because the legal requirements are much lower. A charter picks its students, if not during the application process then during purposeful mismanagement of special populations that are pushed to withdraw to public schools. Ask anybody who works in Boston about the parade of special education and ELL students from charters to public schools right before MCAS tests come around.
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p>There are mountains of regulations in public schools to which charters are not subject, everything from lunch nutrition to stunt curriculum (ie, you must teach subject X on day Y no matter who disruptive that is to students’ learning) to family communication requirements.
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p>When I hear a politician, who is not a schoolteacher, advocate for charter schools I hear a politician saying “I don’t know how to build schools, lets leave it to the professionals to build the schools and give them the resources.”
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p>I guess there are two types of “professionals”. One is the type who work in schools, who are trained in education, who have been in a classroom sometime over the last twenty years, and have received (often at their own expense) extensive training in dealing with all sorts of challenging sub-populations. Those people work in public schools.
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p>Then there are the “professionals” with consulting firms, MBAs, lobbyists, advertising budgets, and a bottom line that they watch who say they know how to run schools, even though there is no rigorous academic study to back that up. These people want as many charters as they can bully politicians into forcing onto municipalities.
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p>When I hear a politician advocate for charters, I hear “I have no idea how to improve public schools, which is really part of my job, so I’m going to outsource that to the private sector in the hopes that they can improve education as a byproduct of improving their profit margin. Either way, that’s easier than having public school professionals tell me things that I don’t want to hear and would make for bad campaign rhetoric.”
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p>If you think it’s possible that every single American student — including those with severe learning disabilities, language issues, and behavioral obstacles — are going to handle ELA and math by 2014 at a level deemed unreachable forty years ago, you’re either a naif or running for re-election.
…seems an objection to charters, per se, but rather to the execution: which follow-through, it seems to me, is an inherent danger in nearly all systems of any degree of complexity. So I don’t understand the visceral reaction to charter schools here, as opposed to anywhere else. If you are saying that the process of getting to a charter school is fraught with corruption and advertising budgets and an over-abundance of the ‘bad’ professionals you describe above… well, that too isn’t a judgement on charter schools. Nor can I see any process in our local, state and federal governments not fraught with the same dangers…
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p>I’m not sure where this enters into the conversation at all. If you’re (now) arguing that all charter schools should be subject to the same strictures and outcomes, I would counter that such sentiments are inimical to the very idea of charters as well as to your argument about them being ‘easier’. Nor, it need be said, must I worry at all about American students as a whole, consumed as I am by Massachusetts schools:which schools have concerns enough on their own…
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p>I think we’d both agree that getting out from under some of the more odious regulations, restrictions and ‘stunt curricula’ would be a good thing for the students and for the teachers in the public schools. I think, perhaps, in day-to-day operations this might make the charter schools superficially more relaxed (or ‘easy’ as you put it) but that just means the hard work is up front: writing the charter to get out from under the regulations without imposing either undo burdens nor distinctly less competent administration. As it stands right now, it seems that two distinctly Pavlovian responses occur at the mention of the word ‘charter’; outright disgust or anticipatory drooling. This is done with a vividly vague imagining of what is meant by the word ‘charter’… When in fact, what is meant is, as yet, a blank page.
I have no objection to charters per se. If we want to increase learning opportunities for students I’m fine with that — as long as everyone plays by the same rules. I’m a strong advocate for radically increasing vocational capacity because voke schools have to play by the same rules.
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p>The fly-by-night operations that Deval wants to shovel more money have it easier, and I’m sick of privatization advocates who pretend otherwise.
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p>My statement is in reference to the No Child Left Behind Act, which requires all students to be “proficient” in ELA and math by 2014 — and “proficient” for an eighth grade today is what “passing” was for an 11th grader forty years ago.
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p>To me, that demand that schools somehow make all students be proficient no matter their abilities or backgrounds is the equivalent of demanding that doctors keep anyone from dying. It is the clearest statement of cowardice on education that politicians regularly employ — as they do when they pretend that charter funding is some magic wand.
from charters?
First, there is profit to be made from schools. The privatizers want in, and by getting the per-pupil amount they can recruit less-than-per-pupil amount students and make money, especially if they go to high per-pupil amount areas. Want to make a fortune? Start a charter school that draws from the Cambridge, Belmont, Watertown, Arlington areas. Make sure, as they all do, that they are highly underrepresented in ELL students, and slightly underrepresented in SPED populations…both of which cost MORE than the per-pupil allotment; and make DAMNED sure that you don’t offer a vocational charter school, since vocational students are the most expensive of all and you’ll go bankrupt immediately trying to make it on the per-pupil allotment.
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p>Second: You do not have to have anything innovative; but you ahve to repeat on cue that charters are “innovative.” I have not heard of one innovation from any charter school that is not currently done in regular public schools. The one innovation public schools cannot do that charter routinely do is segregation of population. At the most basic level, charters segregate by “parents who give a damn.” Others find other gimmicks to segregate…like the “More Science High School” Charter in Worcester. Or the Pacific Rim Charter School. Certainly, you NEVER have to follow the Charter School Law, whcih required innovation that “can be replicated in the public school systems.” Can anyone name one? I pay close attention to this, and cannot find one. As a matter of fact, some Charter Schools, like the South Shore Charter School, were originally programs within a public school system, and went public for funding reasons.
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p>Third, the claim that charters do better is based ONLY on MCAS, and if you can segregate populations, even along the “parents who give a damn” continuum, and you DON’T do better on MCAS, you should be drawn and quartered…educationally, of course. However, studies seem to show that when there are apple-to-apple comparisons of students, charters do no better than public schools.
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p>Fourth, public funding is the ONLY reason for calling these schools public. Proof? When a kid flops out, or is “counseled out (usually SPED), or kicked out..where does that kid go?
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p>That place the kid goes is a public school.
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p>That’s some of what we’ve learned so far.
My first reaction–and I don’t claim any inside skinny–is that this is a plan for receivership of the state’s worst school districts. If that’s done right it could be a good thing for the students.
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p>Take the 30 worst districts, already crippled by deep cuts in local aid, and suck the remaining money out of them to fund the charters. The regular public schools are stuck with all the special-ed costs and crumbling infrastructure. They are already failing, and this pushes them into lord-of-the-flies territory.
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p>Unless the plan is to take those schools with funding, on the mode of Chelsea. If so I hope they roll it out swiftly and in a coordinated way.
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p>Of course, if this is just another Beacon Hill plan to use the schools as a credit card (already far in the red) for state spending, then fail, fail, fail.
“take over those schools…”
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p>2. To their credit, those urban districts are studying the outcomes of kids, and also to their credit, being transparent about results.
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p>For example, the Mayor was behind a study which found that of the roughly 4,000 Boston kids who entered open-admissions high schools in 1996, just 6% earned a college degree by 2006.
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p>3. Many urban superintendents are actually embracing charters, like Joel Klein in NYC.
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p>His district is about 18 times larger than Boston.
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p>He categorically rejects the “diverting money” frame. He says the public dollars should follow the kid to whatever public school he attends.
I would not support expanding charter schools unless they start to focus on the students who truly need help: special education and ESL students.
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p>Its these two populations that are most at risk of failing the MCAS, and dropping out of school. Most of the urban students whose parents advocate for them to attend a charter school are going to succeed no matter where they attend.
Didn’t the Boston Foundation study of a few months ago specifically track families who entered the charter lottery, and compared those who won with those who lost? And didn’t it find that the kids in the charter schools still did better — thereby calling into question the notion that the only thing is how motivated the family is? Link
The Boston Foundation refused to submit this thing for academic evaluation…they just printed it with a tendentious title and attached it to a press release. Heck, the guy who designed the cover gets credit in the study before the authors do.
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p>If they were so confident in this study, it would be refereed the way that serious studies on education are. Instead, it is already suffering the fate of so many other charter studies that are dismembered by publications such as Mother Jones.
was completed by these individuals.
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p>
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p>The study, however, seems to be well respected and frequently cited. I’m curious if you have a link to back up this claim:
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p>
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p>My understanding is that the study was requested by the DESE. From the report itself, here’s Chester’s letter:
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Note that the funding source is a pro-charter, pro-privatization organization. The authors knew who wrote the check, and the report would never see the light of day if it didn’t have the right finding.
I don’t know any of the researchers who compiled the report, but I’m a little hesitant to dismiss it out of hand with the blanket assertion that none of these people has any professional integrity.
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p>I’m not defending the study as I haven’t read it and I don’t have the expertise to evaluate their methodology. Show me where the study is erroneous, flawed, or intentionally biased and we can talk about it. I am not a supporter of charter schools (duh) BUT if there are some schools doing things well with measurable results, then I AM in favor of looking at what they do. Having said that, I’m bothered by the knee-jerk rejection of the contents of this study simply because vocal people don’t like the findings or the sponsors.
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p>For over ten years I’ve had to deal with probably the most successful charter school in the Commonwealth, Parker. I taught in the hosting town that lost boatloads of students to the school (causing the middle school to die a slow and painful death), and I represent a district that loses boatloads of students to the school, too (causing two of our towns to hemorrhage students, as well). Parker is one charter school that is doing great things, and those who choose to ignore what they are doing do so to the detriment of students. My high school sent a team of teachers over to Parker to both observe and participate in their jury judging of senior projects. We are working on incorporating the things we like about what they do there in our school as we try to move towards incorporating essential school (as well as Breaking Ranks II) principles and values into our very average suburban public high school.
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p>One of the reasons I generally refrain from participating in these discussions on this site is the unwillingness of the anti-charter school folks to concede that we can learn things to do and NOT to do from these models. This isn’t a zero-sum game, in my view, and I find the stridency off-putting, anti-education, and anti-student.
The Discovery Institute has plenty of Ph.Ds writing their stuff, too. So are the nutrition “studies” that find benefits from eating the unhealthiest foods imaginable. DESE requested a study by a pro-charter administrator appointed by a pro-charter politician. The study was paid for by pro-charter sources and immediately published without refereeing, and was released in politician-friendly pamphlet form complete with a photograph of a child on the cover. This is a lobbying document written under academic names, not an academic document used for lobbying.
are not credible because what they write and publicly assert has not only been refuted by qualified scientists but is also evidently bullshit garbage even to the lay person. Having a PhD doesn’t preclude anyone from being a crackpot. (As an aside, I’m rather familiar with the Discovery Institute as both an avid reader of Pharyngula and as someone with a degree in geology who is always entertained by Christianist junk science.)
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p>If there are readers out there who can refute, with evidence, the assertions made in this study, then by all means they should do so. Show me the Discovery Institute equivalent of bullshit garbage in this Boston Foundation study and I’ll concede my point.
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p>So far the rejection of this study looks and feels more like what Discovery Institute scientists do: they reject out of hand what doesn’t conform to their world view and substitute appeals to emotion loaded with confabulation.
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p>I’m more than happy to see this study refuted. I like to believe that charter schools suck because that conforms with my own world view as a public school teacher, but evidence is required. Sorry.
Which I took essentially to be “see? Ph.Ds wrote it!” Working in a think tank for two years disabused me of any notion that Ph.Ds confer much beyond a reward for persistence and a big bill.
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p>The body of evidence beyond this isolated study of suspect provenance is, as far as I’ve ever seen, neutral. There are numerous academic refereed studies that show little change in one model or the other. Charter schools don’t seem to do worse, or better than public schools on standardized test — even though the pervasive anecdotal evidence is that they educate a median student with fewer challenges. No surprise there — is a student is too challenging, charters have the option of remanding him/her to public schools and they would have to be crazy not to at least consider it constantly.
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p>So we have a model of whom less is demanded in terms of student challenges and government requirements, and does equally well as public schools. That to me is not a success…it’s at best a “not fail”.
I pointed out who wrote the study for informational purposes as I could not detect, based on where the researchers were from, that there was a clear pro-charter bias at work.
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p>As to your assessment of the efficacy of charter schools in general, a view from 30,000 feet doesn’t provide much information of value. Charter schools are not a monolithic entity with any uniformity around the nation or even around a state, so claims that there is a body of evidence somewhere that suggests that charters “don’t seem to do worse, or better than public schools on standardized test” are not terribly meaningful.
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p>On a local basis, the schools that are doing things well and have demonstrable results across a wide range of indicators demand our attention and our study. Few public schools, however, bother to send teams of teachers and administrators to other schools. This is simply unacceptable. The silo mentality in our public schools is counterproductive and unprofessional. I’m convinced that our collective unwillingness to take risk will continue to ensure that public schools make little progress.
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p>Ineffective schools, whether they are public or charter, must be dealt with, sometimes with drastic interventions. That’s as it should be. When students don’t learn, people should get fired. Similarly, effective schools whether they are public or charter, also demand our attention. Practices, programs, and philosophies that work in these schools should serve as models for other schools. No excuses.
Informing the Debate: Comparing Boston’s Charter, Pilot and Traditional Schools
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p>Not the sort of scholarship that should be dismissed out of hand.
I’m a teacher in an entirely average public high school. I’m also an elected representative on a large regional school district committee. Given the two vantage points, I have to say I don’t feel particularly threatened by this. Increasing the numbers of charter seats in districts that continue to fail to meet student needs isn’t inherently a bad thing.
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p>In my elected capacity, I’m involved in an effort to massage, shall we say, one of our schools into something that looks more like an essential school. Why? Because there is a sizable student population who is well served by this model and we are losing quite a few of them to one of the most successful charter schools in the state. We’d like to get some of those students back as well as provide an alternative to current in-district students who might benefit from an alternative model. Win/win.
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p>Everyone must evolve. I say bring on the competition. Poking the education establishment into meaningful reform is long overdue.
A rating didn’t seem proficient. Bravo, for posting this. Very well grounded and reasoned.
as the Sam Cooke song says but I thought this praise from the Pioneer Instituteof Charlie Baker fame was interesting from a political point of view.
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p>We applaud Governor Patrick and Education Secretary S. Paul Reville’s proposal to lift one of the caps on charter schools. The administration’s focus on low-performing districts is reasonable. Lifting the 9 percent cap on net district spending to 18 percent is substantial and will attract charter operators with proven ability to address the achievement gap in our urban districts.
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p>To be sure, some improvements can be made to the legislative proposal, but that can be done through outreach to the legislature by the administration, the business community and educational reformers across the state.
According to the Boston Globe:
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p>Deval is playing to Charlie Baker’s base, which is happily going to follow Baker to the corner office, while alienating his own base. Sure fire formula for defeat.
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p>Tim Murray for Governor?
Is Deval still on BMG’s progressive list? Is Obama? Is Sam Yoon? Tom Menino (was he ever?)?
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p>I have written in my SEN column that charters are not the answer to our educational problem.
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p>I highly recommend a book by Michael and Susan Klonsky, “Small Schools: Public School Reform Meets the Ownership Society,” which explains how the neo-cons hi-jacked the progressive movement toward small, democratic, student-oriented schools and are using the charter mirage to turn our schools into privatized, union-busting, corporate test-score factories.
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p>The privatization of education parallels the privatization of public open space. The Boston Common is being handed over to nearby institutions and businesses soon to be united as a private conservancy, to profit from free public land — and to cleanse that land of “undesirables” (maybe we should threaten to euthanize the homeless, to get some attention on this). The new state-owned Greenway is being turned, by a private Conservancy stuffed with tax dollars beyond any reasonable need, into a rent-a-park, a venue for private fee-paying events, with specified “free speech areas.” The bold, innovative formula for public services is now private control at public expense.
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p>We are going down the wrong road, and we’re being led there by the very people we trusted to restore progressive values to our government and our society. If we want future generations to understand the value of government, public services and democratic civic life, we’d better get a grip.
Policy areas where privatization is bad:
Health care
Casinos
Infrastructure
Public transit
Military
Agriculture
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p>Policy areas where privatization is good:
Education
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p>Boston Public Schools: (data from the 2007-2008 DOE report card, available at http://www.bostonpublicschools.com)
Students receiving special education services: 20.1%
Students with limited English proficiency: 19.1%
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p>Remember those numbers as we look at some much lauded charter schools in Boston! (These numbers are all taken from the schools’ 2007-2008 annual reports, available on their websites, http://www.cityonahill.org, http://www.pacrim.org, and http://www.matchschool.org)
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p>City on a Hill:
Students receiving special education services: 12%
Students with limited English proficiency: less than 1%
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p>MATCH:
Students receiving special education services: 9.4%
Students with limited English proficiency: 0%
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p>Academy of the Pacific Rim:
Students receiving special education services: 18%
Students with limited English proficiency: Not listed! (but NCLB report card at profiles.doe.mass.edu reveals 1.3%!)
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p>Wow! How do these amazing charter schools get such great test scores? What could their secret be? I can’t wait till we double the number of these laboratories of educational innovation!
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p>But wait! There’s more! Here’s some bonus data!
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p>City on a Hill:
Admitted 80 students 2007-2008.
Graduated 27 students 2007-2008.
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p>MATCH:
Admitted 70 students 2007.
Graduated ??? Data not listed! Globe article suggests 42 students.
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p>APR:
Admitted 68 students 2007-2008.
Graduated 21 students 2007-2008.
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p>But, surely if those students who are being so well-served by these educational powerhouses were staying all the way to graduation, the number of incoming students and the number of graduating students would match up! Why, this data suggests these schools aren’t even serving the majority of students they admit! Seems like a great reason to double the number of charter schools!
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p>Not serving the most challenging students and losing most of your students before graduation: why didn’t the regular public schools think of that?
…not that the Pioneer Institute would ever fund it.