In 2007-2008, 19 percent of the students were designated as limited English proficiency. Only 2 percent of those in all Boston charter schools were limited English proficiency.
Boston charter schools serve SPED students with significantly fewer and less severe learning disabilities.
65% of the students attending Boston Public Schools live in the poorest households compared to 52% in all Boston charter schools.
The Boston Public Schools do a significantly better job of ensuring that students successfully move from grade 9 to grade 12 in a timely fashion. Many, if not most, of Boston charter schools fail to see most of its freshman class reach senior year.
I'm a public school teacher, and I'm opposed to the increased proliferation of charter schools. The funding system is iniquitous and unfair to the many public schools that do a good job. As the MTA research points out, charter schools probably don't do any better at educating kids than public schools. Those in existence should continue as the experiments they are. We may have things to learn from charter schools, and they provide some students with a better choice than they might otherwise enjoy.
Mark
Boston high school annual departure rate is 22%.
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p>Charter high school annual departure rate is 15%.
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p>Assuming I can give you a citation on the 22% that you find credible, would you concede that your point is in error?
I have seen the special ed and struggling students pushed out of charters before they drop out. First, fewer struggling students are accepted in the first place and second, those that really need help don’t graduate fron charter schools. A study to be valid would show the CAL APs of the populations and the statistical relationship between CAL AP – California Aptitude- test of the like and graduation/non graduation in both public and charter high schools.
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p>I would love to see both Charter and Public school graduation rates compared as against Catholic High School and Waldorf High School graduation rates while we are at it.
Disclosure – I am not a fan of the local public high school, could not find a charter to accept or work with either of my kids, and went with in one case a 766 “out placement” and in the other child’s case, Waldorf and became quite the fan of the Waldorf School philosophy.n
I’m more concerned about exaggerated claims for charter schools than proving they are as bad (or good) as public schools.
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p>If you have the time, I would urge you to read the report or at least the executive summary and conclusions. I don’t know if your own school is included or not.
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p>As a charter school teacher, do you see attrition to the degree that the MTA documents? Do you think the application process skims the better students off for charter schools? I’m interested in your personal experience.
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p>Mark
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p>After reviewing several thousand students and lottery losers, they found charter and district-run pilot schools had the exact same “skim” if you call it that. It was about 0.1 to 0.2 standard deviations.
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p>So if a typical Boston kid is about the 20th percentile in the state, a charter or pilot school kid probably arrives around the 23rd to 26th percentile. Still with a very low chance of college success absent major intervention.
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p>Obviously the average kid in the state is the 50th percentile.
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p>I’ve always said the populations (I think) that the populations are not IDENTICAL, but much more similar than different.
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p>2. We’ve always offered, as charter people, to do what they do in NYC. Simply to mail charter school application info in the language of origin to the families who don’t speak English.
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p>3. Back to the point above, why isn’t the fact that charters have LOWER departure rates than the district relevant? I guess to me as a “homer” for charters it feels like that’s an absolutely dispositive point.
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p>That is, the “MTA’s” Boston schools if we call them that have a much higher student departure rate — it would seem like they’d have the least standing to go after charters.
the MTA study says that the sampling of The Boston Foundation study may be flawed because it relied on charter school waiting lists:
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p>Also…
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p>I’d have to go back and read the TBF study again to really put this stuff into my own words. The MTA study directly refutes the TBF study. For any policy wonks, it’s worth reading.
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p>I’m sorry if outing you puts you on the spot, though as you say, you were halfway there. Although I don’t know you personally, I’ve read most of your posts over the years and see you as a fellow educator with good intentions. We may disagree on policy, but I think we agree on educational goals and believe you also do a good job.
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p>Mark
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p>The key point in MTA is the charge that charters lose kids.
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p>The most basic issue they skirt — it’s compared to what?
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p>When BPS high school mobility is 50% higher than charter high mobility, or if you prefer, when MTA run high schools have 50% higher mobility than charters each year, isn’t that the pot calling the kettle black?
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p>I mean, I commend them on their political success in getting the Globe to run with this and omit the only single form of comparison — instead of a headline that says “Charters Have Less Attrition Than District Schools”, they manage to get “Charters Have Attrition!”
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p>2. TBF accounted for all attrition in charters. Take another look and let me know what you think.
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p>My reading was:
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p>If a kid attended a charter, even for an hour, and then left for any reason, his score was assigned to the charter.
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p>How does that not control for attrition?
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p>And TBF found that counting all attrition, charter lottery winners made huge gain over charter lottery losers.
“refute.” I meant refute as in oppose, not refute successfully. As a former debate coach, I used the word rather freely. The MTA report specifically addresses the TBF use of waiting lists for randomization purposes, though I still need to puzzle it out in context of the TBF study, which I thought was pretty compelling when I read it.
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p>Rhetorically, the contention of the TBF report was that charter schools are responsible for high-achievement. Mitchell Chester’s introductory letter even says we have to figure out why charter schools are so effective.
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p>The charter schools listed in TBF report “are less likely to serve a diverse student population based on language proficiency, special needs special needs category, and level of poverty,” according to the MTA report. The implication is that much of charter school achievement could be attributable, not to innovative methods, but to serving a different population.
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p>Another concern is attrition, which may be caused by charter school policies before and during enrollment. There is no documentation on this, but the extreme attrition begs for more research. Is high achievement due to losing students who would not have succeeded or, as Chester suggests, charter school innovations?
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p>The overriding point is that comparing charter schools and regular public schools is not an apple-to-apple comparison. And as Ryan points out, why not give public schools the opportunity to innovate?
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p>The innovative charter school practices listed in the DESE publication on that topic were not exactly earth-shattering. Extra tutoring? All IB courses? Extended learning time? Any of these is doable or being done in some regular public schools.
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p>By their very nature and the MGL, charter schools are assumed to be special, better than public schools. The MTA report seriously draws that status into question.
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p>Sorry for punking out on the TBF methodology. It’s Sunday night, and I’ve got school and a select board meeting tomorrow. I promise I’ll reread it and let you know what I think.
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p>Mark
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and looked at the TBF study. It’s much more complex than the MTA study. At issue is the sample.
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p>You’re right. The MTA doesn’t refute the TBF study as much as I interpreted it to do so.
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p>Maybe I missed it, but I couldn’t find how many schools were included in the lottery sample. Maybe that’s immaterial because students are being looked at in the aggregate, but they list the schools involved in the “observational” portion of the study.
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p>1. Maybe you frame the issue of charter school attrition as no big deal or “at least we’re better than the BPS.” But public school teachers have had it shoved down our throats that charter schools are better than public schools. Historically, there was more than one rationale for the existence of charter schools, but the underlying reasons were that teachers, backed by unions, were resistant to change, not to mention lazy. My career began in the year of education reform, much of which was a bitch-slap to public school teachers. We’re supposed to learn from you guys. It’s decreed by law that charter schools are innovative and should provide models for “replication in other public schools.” The fact that Boston charter schools are bleeding students, that charter schools aren’t perfect, is big news to anyone who follows them in the press. The Editors of the Globe must extol the virtues of charter schools once a month.
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p>?????????MTA run schools???????
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p>2. On a research note, you’re right that the study attempts to control for attrition. This is a very strong design. I would agree that the procedure has merit. Though the MTA study cites Miron’s criticism of using waiting lists for random sampling, I couldn’t find any work by Miron to clarify and the MTA study, unfortunately, does not relate the criticism to the TBF study. The TBF study acknowledges its limitations. The question is how much, if at all, they skew the results.
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p>So, everything comes back to the quality of the sample. As the authors note, they don’t include all schools or all years. Which schools did they include and how many students? The MTA says the TBF study included 7 Boston charter schools–half of the charter schools in question. The observational portion included 12 of the 14 schools.
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p>If the sampling is good, if MCAS scores are an important measure of student learning, this is a compelling study.
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p>If it matters what happens after 10th grade, if it matters that charter schools brag about their college acceptance rates in spite of high rates of attricion, then the MTA study points out a problem.
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p>Mark
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p>But the most similar study on charters, Hoxby in NYC using similar design, he scored 28 or 29 out of 32 — it was, in his mind, the best designed charter study ever done out of scores of studies.
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p>1. To your other point, I think we totally agree. If I taught at a district school, I would find all the charter-lauding VERY ANNOYING.
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p>But think about why. To fight for our very lives, charters must extol our virtues.
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p>Think about it, a handful of (mostly) former teachers now leading little charter schools up against a very well-financed never-ending anti-charter assault by the MTA and the school associations (featuring my esteemed debating partner Pablo). Those guys have political pros, who work Beacon Hill and the media for a living. Charters have 1/20th of a lobbyist on the payroll.
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p>I think teachers in high-poverty traditional schools are often given a really RAW DEAL. I’m friends with a lot of these folks. I do what I can to help, howsoever small (my school is the largest supplier of math tutors to help kids in BPS teachers’ classrooms).
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p>But I helped start our school precisely as a RESPONSE to the tough lot of teachers. I concluded – I have no friggin idea how to fix traditional schools. But in our school, each teacher gets 10 hours a week of help in grading papers and making copies and stuff; each teacher gets a TA to help lead review sessions; the kids each get their own personal tutor so teachers aren’t expected to do what I think is incredibly tough work of remediating each of 100 kids.
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p>Look, Obama blanched when Carter made racial claims — Obama doesn’t believe those claims. Sometimes charter proponents make claims about charters that are excessive….but I don’t think you see a lot of charter STAFF making those claims. Still, it creates a tit-for-tat escalation environment, and of course it precludes any charter “what works” stuff from ever potentially taking hold.
The governor was dismissive of it when I brought it up. Simply put, they installed a methodological change that resulted in the completely opposite result from what was intended. That right there tells you what the study’s worth.
MATCH Charter School?
I haven’t gone to your link yet, but I do intend to read the study, and maybe I’ll have more to say.
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p>Your comments reinforce my fears of the “left behind” phenomenon when charters can pick and choose whom they accept. They don’t have to take kids with severe special needs, for example.
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p>I have a friend here in the Berkshires whose son needs special attention, so she placed him in a charter school, only to find he wasn’t getting it, so she moved him to a private school, where he is much happier. One anecdote doesn’t prove anything, obviously, but it caught my attention.
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p>My sister-in-law is the SPED Director in a town in the Pioneer Valley, so I hear a lot of horror stories. She has succeeded, in the 3 or 4 years she’s been there, in reducing the number of out-of-district placements the system was doing, saving the school system lots of money and giving the kids the attention they need and deserve.
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p>This may be a poor analogy, but I think about the debate over the “public option” in healthcare. The success of such a plan would seem to depend on having everyone in the pool (i.e. mandates) because, unlike the insurance companies, a public plan could not pick and choose whom it covers, and thus runs the risk of reverse cherry-picking, or in other words attracting only people who are already sick, instead of a representative pool of the population.
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p>In the same way, if charter schools can pick and choose, how is one to compare their performance with district schools (btw, you seem to talk about charter schools as if they were not public schools, which is not the case)?
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p>Obviously, I am not an educator, and I have a lot to learn about this issue, so thanks again for pointing out this report. I don’t know enough yet to say this is a civil rights issue, though it does strike me as contrary to the spirit of Brown v Board of Education (i.e. separate is not equal).
… but don’t point to anything, a priori, that would leave one to believe that all charter schools are subject to this issue, nor that we ought to scrap the notion of charter schools altogether. That said, I stand with you on the issue of selective admissions and deliberate winnowing of the student population. In the instances where these things are done, they ought to be curtailed, and any charter school that cannot survive absent these practices ought to forced to shut down.
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p>A few questions for you:
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p>Many charters schools, as this report obliquely acknowledges, have rigid disciplinary codes. If the disciplinary codes are more rigid when compared to traditional DOE public schools doesn’t that mean that A) some students and/or their parents might opt away from charter schools and 2) more students who opt into charters will fall afoul of such codes and suffer the resultant consequences, up to and including expulsion? Do you think that these more rigid disciplinary codes are put in place to have more rigid discipline? Or merely (as subtext which you and this report dance around) a pretext to screen/winnow students?
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p>Since every charter school is unique to itself, can we really use a broad based measure like ‘dropout rates’ across them all to compare them? Is the 30-40% that you cited a problem of a few bad actors in the system? In which case is it that a few of the schools are prompting much of the problem? Or, since charter schools can and have failed, and assuming that the entire population of that school is then returned to traditional public schools, wouldn’t the number of public schools returnees be somewhat large by the very nature of a charters possiblity of non-renewal?
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p>Since, as the report also points out, charter schools are statutorily limited in the total size then aren’t the data comparisons somewhat skewed? Think of it as an inequality: 25% of 1000 isn’t comparable to 25% of 10. That is to say, can we compare a school of 1000 students, who might lose 25% of their populace (250 students) to a school of 10 students who, if the lost 25%, would be losing 2-3 students. (I’m exaggerating the difference in sizes in order to illustrate the point) And, even if we could compare them, could we still extrapolate and say that should a charter school grow from 10 to 1000 students they dropout rates would remain a constant percentage?
Given that charter schools are unique in both curriculum and populations I don’t see how we could normalize this data.
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p>Given the aforementioned more rigid disciplanary codes alongside the size differential isn’t a significant differential in DOE schools and charter school rates (in just about every category, I would think…) to be expected?
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“Given the aforementioned more rigid disciplanary (sic) codes alongside the size differential isn’t a significant differential in DOE schools and charter school rates (in just about every category, I would think…) to be expected?”
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p>If the “apples and oranges” argument applies here, why does it not apply with MCAS results? Isn’t a copmparison of MCAS results from Boston English and Roxbury Prep equally specious? And yet such comparisons are blared by pro charter people.
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p>Not by this pro-charter person. I’ve never been a big fan of standardized tests, for exactly this ‘apples-to-oranges’ reason. One of the reasons I’m among the ‘pro-charter peoples’ is because I believe that the cookie cutter approach of the DOE public schools is a bad one.
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p>Having said that, however, I’m forced to note that, of the more recent charters issued, a significant portion, if not all of ’em, rely on MCAS, in whole or in part, to measure performance as part of the charter.
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characterization of cookie cutter public schools, even as I wonder what it means or what the DOE has to do with it.
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p>Charter school proponents started the apples-to-apples comparison to public schools. Public schools were the half-rotten apples; charter schools were fresh and shiny, what every apple should aspire to be if they weren’t bogged down by change-resistant teachers and their unions. The MTA study suggests that charter schools are only fresh and polished apples because they shed the worms that public schools, by law, must educate.
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p>In a better world, we would consider the non-objective variables that contribute to good schooling. But these variables are hard to document. And that’s charter schools brag about their 100% pass rate on the MCAS tests.
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p>Mark
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p>Except for the fact that you seem to refuse to believe that charters are, or even refer to them as, public schools, I think we both agree that any attempt by charter schools to screen, winnow, oust or otherwise manipulate admissions and matriculation is wrong and should not be done. I think that charter schools, by law, should educate each and every public school student who’s name is chosen by lottery, just as the DOE schools do. (And DOE is “Department of Education” which I use as shorthand to distinguish one form of public school from another… otherwise we get into these types of misunderstandings, where ‘public’ is put in opposition to ‘charter’ as though one is truly ‘public’ and the other isn’t… ) If some charter schools do this, either through loopholes or ledgerdemain, then they should be stopped from doing this. But just as we don’t denigrate the very idea of a bank because some get robbed so too we shouldn’t condemn the idea of charter schools because some charters are abused. If the problem is so widespread that no charter school can survive absent these practices, then the charter movement should rightly die from lack of oxygen. I don’t see that we are there yet.
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p>I think that fear of charter schools, resulting in the legally imposed limits on their slice of the pie may be, as much as anything else, to blame here. When you have smaller groups, each individual in that group counts for more. So we see numbers that worry, when they ought not to. An analogy: in the early part of a baseball season, when the players have only had a dozen or so at-bats, you’ll often see players hitting .400 or better. But at the end of the season, they’re average is much less… are they better players? Of course not. But at the beginning of the season each at-bat has a stronger impact on the the average. At the end of the season, after hundreds of at-bats each instance can change the avg only very little.
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p>This is true also for charter schools: with smaller numbers each individual student success or failure disproportionately impacts the curve, with respect to other public schools. This is why you shouldn’t compare them in this way.
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p>I think that, absent chicanery, a 100% pass rate would be something to brag about, especially if it’s in the contract (charter) to achieve that. Now, if chicanery is present, as you alledge, then something ought to be done about that. We agree.
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p>Personally, I think we should grab the records of every student who’ve ever sat, for even five minutes, in a charter school and ask them, and their parents, if they liked the experience. If yes, then why? if no, then why not? Move forward from there
The MTA report is careful not to generalize about all charter schools. The study focuses on those in Boston, though one can certainly speculate about elswhere. Given that the basis of the report is data from DESE, it could be replicated with other charter schools.
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p>My personal view is that charter schools are experiments and should be treated as such. The a priori conclusion etched into the MGL and claimed by charter school promoters is that they are innovators.
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p>I may be naive, but I think the parental agreements and relatively harsh discipline codes of some charter schools are not intentional strategies to get rid of students.
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p>For answers to your statistical questions, I would recommend skimming the report. There are several tables that provide the numbers you’re requesting. The percentage losses are not specious. There are differences in scale between BPS and BCS, but percentage seems like a good way to start examining charter school supporters’ claims of the superiority of charter schools.
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p>For example, the City on a Hill Charter School enrolled 107 students in the Class of 2002. There were 45 seniors in the Class of 2002. CHCS brags that 100% of its 2007 graduates were admitted to college. Yet only 22 of the 66 admitted were left at the beginning of senior year. If a class in a public school this size lost 1/3 of its students by senior year, there would be a public outcry. Regardless of scale, that attrition is huge.
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p>Charter schools really haven’t been in existence that long. There isn’t a solid research base examining them or their various “methodologies.” If I were I a policy maker, I would keep existing schools in existence and study them. I strongly doubt they have much in the way of innovative teaching methods to offer, we have some charter schools. We should learn from them. Also, given the limited opportunities for some kids in the city, it doesn’t seem right to eliminate charter schools.
call charter schools “public schools.” But to do so is misleading.
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p>People simply think of traditional public schools as public schools, accountable to school committees. Charter schools are not accountable to the public, but to a board of trustees.
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p>Calling regular old public schools “DOE schools” neither makes sense nor clarifies the issue. The DOE sets the rules for charter schools too. Why shouldn’t they be described as DOE schools as well? It is responsible for the MCAS test that all non-private schools must take in Massachusetts. The “DOE label” also exaggerates the role the DOE plays in regular old public schools.
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p>For expediency and clarity, referring to public schools and charter schools makes the most sense.
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p>I understand your point on scale, but your point is academic. The scale matters little here. Your analogy to batting averages would be appropriate for grade point averages, but not for enrollment. Batting and grade point averages gravitate toward the mean. There’s no reason why enroll should do so.
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p>The high school I work at has a freshman class of about 225 or so. If we lost 30 kids between freshman and senior year, we’d freak out and want to know why. From a high school point of view, that’s a hell of a lot of kids. The high school where I live has a freshman class of about 80 kids. If they lost half of that grade, that would be catastrophic. Attrition at this rate is a big deal. Decent public schools just don’t have this kind of attrition. There is no issue of scale and averages here. This is not a statistical illusion. It’s a serious problem.
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p>Mark
call charter schools “public schools.” But to do so is misleading.
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p>People simply think of traditional public schools as public schools, accountable to school committees. Charter schools are not accountable to the public, but to a board of trustees.
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p>Calling regular old public schools “DOE schools” neither makes sense nor clarifies the issue. The DOE sets the rules for charter schools too. Why shouldn’t they be described as DOE schools as well? It is responsible for the MCAS test that all non-private schools must take in Massachusetts. The “DOE label” also exaggerates the role the DOE plays in regular old public schools.
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p>For expediency and clarity, referring to public schools and charter schools makes the most sense.
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p>I understand your point on scale, but your point is academic. The scale matters little here. Your analogy to batting averages would be appropriate for grade point averages, but not for enrollment. Batting and grade point averages gravitate toward the mean. There’s no reason why enroll should do so.
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p>The high school I work at has a freshman class of about 225 or so. If we lost 30 kids between freshman and senior year, we’d freak out and want to know why. From a high school point of view, that’s a hell of a lot of kids. The high school where I live has a freshman class of about 80 kids. If they lost half of that grade, that would be catastrophic. Attrition at this rate is a big deal. Decent public schools just don’t have this kind of attrition. There is no issue of scale and averages here. This is not a statistical illusion. It’s a serious problem.
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p>Mark
You would call the charter school the DOE (or now DESE) school, as the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education grants the charter and imposes them on the host community. So, you really have the town school and the state school.
On pg. 8 there’s complete misunderstanding about “Direct Instruction” so the bias is already showing through. But I’ll get back to that later. See here for some debunking of DI myths:
http://www.schoolinfosystem.or…
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p>And in some of the responses in this thread people appear to be implying that traditional schools perform so poorly because they have more challenging students. That’s a silly premise. Traditional public schools get the lion’s share of federal of state aid specifically for working with these populations. AND they have the power to make changes as best addresses all students.
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p>What really matters is the comparison of achievement of similar SES students. Afterall, it’s not about “school performance” it’s about “student performance.” if you’re playing cheerleader for the adults and not demanding better results by way of student achievement, you’re on the wrong side of the education reform debate.
My understanding (which could be wrong) is that charter schools get the average cost per pupil for the district for each student. This translates into taking away money from the non charters because the average cost of teaching a high performing, non special needs student is likely to be less than the average.
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p>It’s a question of cost distribution. If the average is $100 but it only costs $85 to educate the “typical” charter school student but $115 to educate a special needs or the “typical” non charter student, then every student who leaves the non-charter takes $15 away from the “non charter” or special needs student.
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p>If charter school financing doesn’t work this way or the cost of educating students follows a normal distribution, then your point has merit, but I’d need some real data to convince me. I also don’t hear people trumpeting the performance of non-charter schools, I hear people saying charter school performance is being misrepresented, so before we rush to expand the system, let’s get some accurate measures.
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p>Charter schools aren’t funded for infrastructure and related overhead (buildings, HVAC, janitors, computers, etc…) If you want to start a charter school you have to come up with those things first, sometimes donated, or part of some grant, or found… So I think this is a case of hoping the funding mechanisms ‘all comes out in the wash’…
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p>An excellent point.
the “direct instruction” mention is a non-issue as far as the report’s findings go. I don’t necessarily disagree with you about the inaccuracy, but I would attribute to a shoddy attempt to provide a citation. By direct instruction, the authors mean teacher-centered instruction, not ineffective, but hardly innovative. (The works cited mention a book concerning DISTAR if you are so inclined to check it out).
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p>You dismiss the difficulties of the educating students who are “more challenging.” Your apparent reason: they get the “lion’s share” of funding. Getting the largest share of funding does not mean enough funding.
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p>Then you assert that only comparing students of similar socioeconomic status matters. Why is it only this that matters? Why not compare students with similar degrees of parental support?
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p>Incidentally, the MTA study examines SES and finds that although most Boston charter schools educate poor students, they are less poor than the Boston Public School counterparts.
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p>So you don’t have to beat around the bush, I’ll state it explicitly: the achievement issues in urban and rural schools are due to out of school factors. See .Berliner, 2009 for a review of these factors.
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p>Mark
I had to chuckle when I read this. As you correctly know, I teach. In the district I taught in before my current district, we had a student body with complex socioeconomic issues. Fully 25% of our students were on plans and more than 35% had open DSS (at that time) files. Aye yay yay. Tough group; tough problems.
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p>Our principal, however, was from another state. In many ways this principal was extremely forward thinking and progressive, up to date on the latest methodologies, etc. This principal’s solution, though, to the low-achieving, HUGELY disruptive kids in our school? Homeschooling. I can hear her to this day, edging up to this topic after multiple unproductive meetings with these kids and their parents, “Have you thought about homeschooling your child?” She would then proceed to explain the pros and cons of this approach and how she would help if the parent thought this might be a good fit for the child. HFS. Magic. Sayanara!
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p>There are many ways to shed disruptive, unproductive students in any school in this Commonwealth. That charter schools have perfected an approach that I can only assume is as masterful as this principal’s in style if not substance is not a surprise.
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p>Every year I get kids in my classes, washed out from some charter or another. And I can tell why after about 2 weeks in my room.
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p>Some charters do wonderful things that should be duplicated far and wide, e.g., the sort of stuff that happens at the Parker School. In my school we have paid and continue to pay a great deal of attention to Sizer’s essential school model because it works. Try to get a public school, though, down that road. It’s freakin’ impossible in most cases. But the principles and philosophy are sound pedagogy with demonstrated results.
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p>So while, as a member of a regional school district committee, I find charters to be largely a scam, the few that are successful should be showcased and used as exemplars. Anything that precludes that is negligence. Charters, however, that practice the sort of shedding noted in this post should be shut down stat and those remaining students placed in proper schools.
I mostly agree. I’ve teetered back and forth on charters, for most of my life firmly against. However, I think there’s a need for schools to have flexibility and innovation, teaching to each student’s needs and strengths. So, being pragmatic, a few more charters in districts that struggle the most may not be the worst thing.
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p>The point is, though, why can’t public schools achieve that flexibility and innovation? They can, if we empower them to do so. Charters are a backdoor attempt to do that, fostered by an unholy alliance of rightwing conservatives that would love to see the end of this country’s public school system (and see charters as a way of doing that), as well desperate communities who are just looking for anything that may give their kids a better chance. At the end of the day, a strong public school system that has the strengths of charters, but not the weaknesses, is what we need. We can’t afford charters leeching off the rest of the system, but we can’t afford to fail at teaching our students. That may seem like a conundrum for some, but really the solution should be simple: empower the public schools that are already there to teach to their entire student body, from the kids in honors programs to the kids who have to work harder, or go through more hoops, just to pass than some do to get an A.
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p>I couldn’t agree more. And I would add to this list of communities seeking an alternative parents of students who are somewhat non-traditional learners.
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p>I have said, and will continue to say, that public schools can and should learn from those charters that are making measurable and demonstrable progress. The vast majority of charters are, in my view, a scam, but the few that do things well are to be emulated and duplicated throughout the Commonwealth. Try to get a staunch union teacher, though, to go down that path. It’s ugly. Just try to introduce an essential schools model under an MTA contract. The inflexibility is disgraceful.
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p>Teachers who fiercely guard their outdated methodologies, who exhibit a neurotic attachment to the past when their classroom was their bastion, and who refuse to acknowledge that maybe, just maybe, there are better ways to do things out there need to go. I don’t care if you’ve been teaching for three years or 35. If you can’t grow in ways that challenge your beliefs and comfort zone, if you can’t except the notion that your experience does not equal expertise, and if you refuse to try something new–with people watching–then you don’t belong in a classroom.
“Try to get a staunch union teacher, though, to go down that path. It’s ugly.”
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p>I’m sorry your experiences have been so unpleasant. Most “staunch union teachers” — those crazy folks who insisted on things like weekends — are desperate for new, innovative ideas from charters. And in a range of education courses, I’ve been told of not one single idea from a charter school by any professor of education. Not one. A lot is overpromised, and a slowness to sign on to the flavor of the month will so often be dismissed as horrible unionism.
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p>”Teachers who fiercely guard their outdated methodologies, who exhibit a neurotic attachment to the past when their classroom was their bastion, and who refuse to acknowledge that maybe, just maybe, there are better ways to do things out there need to go.”
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p>As in any field, there is a bit of that in education, whether it’s in the classroom or on the school committee. However, you do a disservice in cutting out the relentless bill of double-talk from the ivory tower for a couple decades. A teacher of 30 years has stopped and started doing the same things a few times, depending on the academic view currently in the ascendant. After a lifetime of watching reforms flame out spectacularly (just take the whole language/phonetics morass), most teachers develop a habit of trying to screen their students from the latest poorly researched, over-hyped academic trend. I’ve been instructed to teach my students four different methods of writing a short essay in five years. Which means that students are told almost every year to unlearn what they practiced and adopt what the new curriculum director/principal/”expert” devised. My students are better off not becoming pawns in these academic spats.
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p>The classroom isn’t my bastion, but I know it better than some newly minted post-doc from the University of Wherever who’s convinced that everything should be thrown out because their attempt at a study proves something they’re desperate to prove. The DC chief of schools spent 3 years in a classroom. Arne Duncan has been hostile to public schools for years. It’s smart not to trust them — you may as well wonder why the Joint Chiefs don’t trip over themselves to take commands from some loser who dodged military duty. To dismiss this with a range of anti-union shibboleths is unfair and unnecessary.
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p>Fact is, innovations happen in public schools, even though the opportunities to share them are made rare by the DESE bureaucrats who’d rather I spend time on kill-n-drill or more curriculum benchmark meetings. I’d love to go to a conference — district can’t spring for the sub. Explain my lesson plan during professional development — the state only counts it if led by an out-of-town expert. Go over a behavior management system with my team — nope, we are at the point where we cancel afterschool help for students because of the number of meetings the principal schedules.
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p>This is tantamount to blaming doctors and nurses for our poor health care situation. And I’m sick of it.
universes. Overstating what I say doesn’t help much either, but that’s okay.
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p>I am not interested in “ivory tower double talk,” but I am interested in effective teaching methods no matter where they come from. I am interested in getting didactic dinosaurs out of the classroom who drone on and on and on all day to drooling students. I am interested in getting teachers out who talk on their cell phones during class (doors closed, of course) while their kids read a textbook chapter. Are these teachers the rule? No. Do they exist? Yes. Are they easily ushered out? Hell no.
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p>The subtle anti-intellectualism evident in some of your comments in the past is evident here, as well. Your “newly minted post-doc from the University of Wherever” really has little do with anything other than your anger at higher institutions who are trying hard to improve the profession. Holy generalizations, Batman, indeed. As with everything, some of what emerges in the field is valuable and some isn’t. Gee, what a surprise.
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p>Most of what I say on these issues elicits a defensive or hostile response from you, so I’m not surprised at the tone of the comment above. You and I will never see eye to eye on these matters. (As an English teacher, I have to say I’m a bit mystified by the “four different methods” to writing instruction you state you’ve been instructed to use, but I’ll take your word for it. Unlearn real writing skills? What does that look like?)
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p>At any rate, I’m sorry you’re tied up in useless meetings in your school. I’m sorry, too, that your school administration is not interested in using the talent in your school to improve teaching in general. I’m sorry you can’t go to conferences. Maybe you should look for another school.
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p>And lastly, this:
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p>No, I’m blaming doctors and nurses who refuse to read the latest advances in their journals, who reject good ideas because they don’t like their origins, and who believe the solution to every problem is a procedure from 1953. Patients cannot get better under circumstances like this. And I’m sick of that.
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p>The profession is changing because it has to. Just like physicians and clinicians of all stripes, stagnant practices are both unethical, unsafe, and neglectful. I’m personally and professionally pleased to see that some change is happening, despite the bumps along the way. Some progress is being made. But then again my glass is usually half-full, and I thank the cosmic dust every day I teach where I teach and do what I do.
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p>Poor psychoanalysis. I don’t mind them trying hard — I do mind them failing spectacularly and the kids paying the cost. In most fields, two opposing views with some support (say, whole language and phonetics) results in a raft of further investigation for consensus. In education, it results in shouting louder, more lectures and products…and students ping-ponging according to the flavor of the time. How many times do learning opportunities turn out to have been lost when a breathless idea, propagated without any real effort to confirm it, is disproven five years later? Remember “Formative Math”?
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p>It’s odd that you feel free to accuse me of anti-intellectualism in the wake of your screed against public school teachers, a group that is on the whole extremely well-educated. FWIW, I spent a few years in IRPP, the premier think tank in Canada. The place was littered with more post-docs coming and going than you’ll see in a Harvard Club. All in all, it was enough to teach me the value of a doctorate — a lot of loans and a lot of persistence.
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p>RESESEC, SNAPS, 6+1, LEDES. Each from a different university school of education. And one comes in, we are to teach that is the way to answer questions, not the different, old way. If your school hasn’t seen the like, you’re an exception.
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p>I don’t bail on my kids. Students who don’t have the ideal administration deserve a fair shot, too.
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p>I’m as passionate about education as you are, LightIris, but I’m not going to take the easy way out of looking for prefabricated scapegoats. Most of what you say on these matters is inveighing against your typification of the burnt out, lazy teacher. But whenever I press you about it, you backpedal immediately, admitting this caraciture is unrepresentative of anything but a small slice of modern teaching. You know this period soliloquy is inaccurate, but admit it only when pressed. You keep bringing it up shorn of context, I’ll keep insisting on restoring context. Why not just be more straightforward next time?
And attacking my integrity does little to move the discussion forward.
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p>I “backpedal”? I’m not “straightforward”? I’m dishonest because you “know” something I know but won’t state? I “overgeneralize”? I’m lazy where you won’t “take the easy way out”?
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p>Well, I’m pleased someone knows my mind and character better than I.
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p>I simply don’t know how to talk to you. It just doesn’t work. These things inevitably slide into something nasty, uncomfortable, and unproductive.
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p>Let’s do everyone a favor. Let’s agree to avoid responding to one another. You have your reality; I have mine. C’est la vie.
I’m sorry this discussion between us so often veers into something so unproductive, regardless of the best intentions.