This is what Carol Johnson’s school closing plan amounts to. The city is already in talks with charter schools to lease the closed school buildings to charter schools.
It’s about union busting, of course, but it’s also something uglier than that.
Here’s how the union-busting part works:
Close 12 schools. This throws a whole bunch of staff out of work, and senior staff will bump junior staff out of jobs.(yes, this is problematic, but a side issue right now) So, basically, this leads to a bunch of young teachers looking for teaching jobs. The charter schools can then hire the same young teachers at a lower salary!
This is going to happen, and it’s shameful that it’s going to happen under the watch of people who are nominally friendly to the idea of organized labor.
But, as I said earlier, there’s something even uglier going on here. Because the more charter schools we have in Boston, the more they are going to begin resembling the regular public schools. Is there a limitless supply of young, idealistic teachers willing to work long hours for short pay? Can charter schools continue to dodge the inevitable discrimination lawsuit from special ed parents? Can charter schools continue to dodge the attrition question forever?
I don’t think any smart person believes the answer to all those questions is yes. So what we end up with, ultimately, is a network of charter schools with the same issues as the Boston Public Schools. This doesn’t benefit the perception of charter schools, though it does accomplish the union busting goal. But what else could be happening here?
The answer lies in accountability. Charter schools in Massachusetts have almost no accountability to the public. They are governed by self-appointing boards and are reviewed by the (decidedly pro-charter school) Board of Ed only once every five years.
So who are they accountable to? By and large, the corporations who fund the grants that allow charter schools to exist. Many of these corporations have seats on the aforementioned self-appointing governing board.
So what this is about is not just union busting. It’s an attack on the very idea of government controlling the services it provides for the public good. What we’ll end up with in Boston is a corporate-controlled, publicly funded school system.
Does the transfer of governing power over public education to corporations worry you at all? I’d like to suggest it should. Here in one of the bluest states in the union, we’re about to preside over the corporatization of public education, an incredible undermining of pretty much every progressive idea about government and the public schools.
Please, please stand up against this. If we lose this one, it’ll be the first nail in the coffin of public education nationwide.
One way to stand up against this “transfer of governing power over public education to corporations,” as Jamaicaplainiac puts it, is to go to the Boston School Committee meeting this Wednesday and stand with the hundreds of Boston parents, teachers, students and others who have been packing meeting after meeting to fight for the traditional public schools they value.
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p>The Boston group Coalition for Equal Quality Education, allies of Citizens for Public Schools, are distributing a leaflet urging folks to attend this meeting, saying:
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p>At previous School Committee meetings, many parents have questioned the notion that the closures have anything to do with improving the quality of education for their children, noting that even on the narrow and incomplete measure of test scores, the schools recommended to them as alternatives do no better than the schools slated for closure. Parents of special needs students have pleaded for their children’s schools to remain open. Parents of children on the autism spectrum say their children have made progress, which will be severely disrupted by a transition to a new school. They say they don’t even know where their children will go or if a new school will be able to support their special educational needs.
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p>Do Massachusetts Democrats and progressives still care about the traditional public schools, which, even with charter school expansion, are responsible for educating the vast majority of public school children? Do we care about the fate of public education in Boston, in Massachusetts and the nation? If so, now’s the time to say something, do something about it.
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“Do Massachusetts Democrats and progressives still care about the traditional public schools, which, even with charter school expansion, are responsible for educating the vast majority of public school children?”
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p>It’s a question worth asking, even if the answer in increasingly obvious. Gee whizz…between tax policy, foreign policy, education, etc., why do we waste all this money on elections?
That’s more than the entire school population of many cities. The exam schools are starving, spending $4000/student, but you think we should be spending money on underenrolled schools?
I’ve a ? for you. See my BMG page for contact info. Thanks.
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p>Lisa
The corporatists are holding hands across the aisle – and it is working families and ordinary people who are being sold out over and over again.
Say what you will, the charters are the only way to put pressure on the Boston Public Schools. Even with the small differences in selection, they have outperformed the regular publics because of obvious differences:
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p>1. school day: the teachers in the BPS have the shortest school day in the state.
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p>2. hiring: the principals of the charters get to hire teachers they actually want. The BPS principals have to take teachers on seniority.
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p>3. evaluation: the teachers at the charters are evaluated using results in the classroom.
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p>These are all things the BPS teachers and administrators have resisted. They have colluded to construct a system based on paycheck first and last, and blame the kids and parents for the failure. The kids are voting with their feet, and the state is not shovelling money into the billion dollar BPS moneypit any more. Change or die.
You haven’t addressed a single one of my criticisms of charter schools, and, furthermore, some of what you’ve written is inaccurate.
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p>The differences in selection are anything but small. Special education students and English language learners simply don’t perform as well on standardized tests. Regular public schools don’t have the choice to send them elsewhere. Charter schools “counsel them out.” I’d be very interested to see how the scores compare if you factor out the low-performing students that charters are unwilling to serve.
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p>1. School day. This is just a terrible failure of imagination on the part of charter schools. Given almost limitless freedom to innovate, this is what they came up with: more of the same.
Furthermore, this is another way for charters to select out students who might be more difficult to educate. Students with family obligations such as caring for a younger sibling (or a child of their own) or needing to work to bring in money for their family are quietly selected out by the amount of time a charter school demands. And the parent involvement contracts that some charters demand also help select out children with parents who are addicts, children in foster care, and all the other “difficult” students that, remember, regular public schools are obligated to serve.
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p>2. On this we agree. “Bumping” is a problem. I don’t think seniority rights should apply across buildings.
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p>3.This is not true and, furthermore, you imply that this is not how BPS teachers are evaluated. In fact BPS teachers are evaluated by their classroom performance. Charter school teachers serve at the pleasure of the administration and may be terminated at any time without cause. Charter school teachers may certainly be dismissed for bad classroom performance. They can also be dismissed in spite of excellent classroom performance because the administration simply dislikes them on a personal level. This is not paranoia–it has happened in Boston charter schools.
…but I would like to hear exactly how folks see charters HELPing traditional publics (and all the kids who still go to them) by “putting pressure” on them.
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p>The pressure part seems accurate: e.g., fewer resources, more challenging students, constant attacks from a variety of sources.
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p>But how specifically does this kind of pressure help schools in their efforts to serve the students left behind and the ones who return from charters after, for whatever reason, they are no longer welcome.
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p>Some students are voting with their feet for charters, but there are also hundreds of parents and students who have been coming out to Boston School Committee meetings to say that they feel their kid’s traditional public school has been doing a good job, they’ve seen progress, and now the rug is being pulled out from under them. Innovative and successful programs are being cut because of lost resources. Relationships between teachers and pupils that take months and years to establish (and are important for all kids but critically so for kids with special learning needs) are severed.
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p>Some parents have said they feel they are being pitted against their neighbors who may have chosen charter schools, and they don’t want to be put in that position. They don’t see how it’s helping anyone.
The parents are filling charter schools that work to capacity. If the schools slate to close or merge were so great why are they chronically underenrolled? Charters that don’t work are closed without any weeping from you, because you are devoted to an ideological situation rather than a real-world result.
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p>Teachers are lining up to apply to work in charter schools even at lower pay and longer hours. Without competition the BPS would never make an effort to improve.
Don’t see any inconsistency there, do ya?
I pointed out how the public option if enacted along the medicaid model was going to result in lower pay for medical providers. I don’t know if I’m against it, I just pointed out how it’s going to come out of somebody’s hide.
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p>Boston teachers have simply priced themselves beyond the public’s willingness to pay for the product they are delivering and so are steadily suffering attrition. The fact that it is done by federal takeovers and school closings is totally the result of the teachers’ contract.
I am not devoted to an ideological situation. I am devoted to success for all students.
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p>Please investigate the attrition question for yourself. I am not making this stuff up.
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p>Parents are certainly lined up at the front door of charter schools trying to get their kids in. That is a fact.
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p>What is also a fact that is ignored by people with an ideological axe to grind is that students are streaming out the back door. Charter high schools in Boston are seeing more than half the students they enroll return to the BPS.
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p>I’m not privy to charter school hiring data, so I’ll have to take your word that teachers are lining up. But, again, how long are they staying?
No you want more teachers under the old BPS contract rather than outside it. That’s you ideological goal. To make it to success for all students you’d have to argue that the present BPS contract is working even while the charters are seeing superior results with the same pool of students.
Seascraper, I do wonder about a policy of opening and closing charter schools as if they were McDonald’s franchises or Gap stores. Seems awfully disruptive to the students and families who go to these schools. (I guess I won’t mention teachers here because there’s an ideology that says their well being is not important.) When I listen to the families fighting to keep their kids’ charter schools open, I do feel that they’re being ill used.
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p>Diane Ravitch has said that when she asked an official in the vaunted Finnish school system–nearly always at the top of the international heap–what they do when teachers aren’t successful, he said they help them get better, as they do with their schools. They don’t shut them down. If you’re interested in some evidence-based analysis, Seascraper, she has a great piece about the real lessons of the PISA international comparisons here.
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p>So, coming back to Jamaicaplainiac’s original assertion, where do you really stand? Do you believe that charters will bring about improvements for all public schoolchildren in Boston, or is your real position, as you put it, “Change or die.”
The charters are the only thing that can bring about reform for the BPS. Yes school closing is inefficient, it’s not the way I would have chosen to do it, but it’s the only way to get rid of a few bad apples. I didn’t design the system that way, you did!
…but it’s doing no favors for your cause. Some boogety boogety boo scary scenario that exaggerates what’s going on is, frankly, counterproductive. And connecting some dots regarding meetings between the Boston School Superintendent and potential Boston Public (charter) Schools to create the further boogeyman of a wholesale undermining of the traditional public schools doesn’t pass the smell test.
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p>Neither many charters, nor any traditional public school, keep adequate records of attrition and transfer rates… so therefore analysis of this (likely) very real problem (for both charter and trad schools) goes undone.
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p>If there are 12 schools worth of lower enrollment, then these people are going to be out of work, period. Charter schools are orthogonal to that issue.
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p>I suggest you don’t have much to go on. This is NOT to suggest that your allegations are untrue, but that they are indeterminate… which is to suggest that perhaps a better use of your time is to make these determinations first.
…your thoughtful disagreement.
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p>A couple of points, though. Charter schools, at least the high schools, keep very accurate attrition records that are available to anyone with an internet connection. Since most of the charter high schools in Boston don’t admit students after the ninth grade, all you have to do is look at four years’ worth of annual reports or school report card data. Look at the size of the 9th grade class in the first year and the size of the 12th grade class in the fourth. There’s your attrition rate.
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p>The MTA actually did this. You can download the study from a link on this page: http://www.btu.org/hot-issues/…
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p>(sorry my HTML skillz are not up to par. I would like a WYSIWYG editor on this site…)
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p>It’s true that lower enrollment will lead to layoffs. What doesn’t pass the smell test to me is Johnson meeting with charter schools to discuss the transfer of the closed buildings. Since physical plant is the single biggest logistical problem for charter schools, what you’ve got here is the public school system facilitating the opening of new charter schools. (or the expansion of existing ones).
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p>It’s not just that the BPS is planning for students to leave the BPS and enroll in charter schools. They are actively helping this to happen. Which is a very weird thing for a public school system to do, in my opinion.
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p>So yeah, if I sound like an alarmist, okay, but I do find this alarming.
What solutions does BTU offer for remedying the $63 million budget shortfall facing BPS next year?
I’m not a member of the BTU. My personal preference would be a return to neighborhood schools, but that idea keeps getting stymied by “progressives” who think bus drivers are more critical to student success than teachers.
If we stipulate (though I’m not sure we should) that charter schools are getting better results than traditional public schools, why don’t we just enact the laws and policies necessary to apply what works in the charters to the traditional system? Charters have always struck me as reinventing the wheel, at least to some extent.